BHHH2 Trash Run #1324 Gold Island Beach Club Serangan

Moon, Croon, June

Serangan is kind of a weird place. All I know about it is that a lot of its existence is more or less the remnants of Tommy Suharto’s grandiose plans in the late ‘90’s for casinos and resorts, resort casinos, casino hotels, blah, blah the nett result of which is now deserted areas of scrubby growth and not entirely exotic nor very tall trees criss-crossed by dirt paths liberally spattered with visible cow shit from invisible cows owned by invisible people. The Marina Bay Sands in Singapore it ain’t, nor ain’t it Straits Quays in Penang (two projects in Asia on reclaimed land on tropical islands that spring to mind) by very long shots indeed. In fact you couldn’t be blamed for saying that the whole enterprise is an abject and unsightly failure. Back in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s (when sabre toothed tigers prowled Kuta) Serangan used to be called and sometimes still is called “Turtle Island”. If turtles are responsible for those giant poop deposits all over the shop, I wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley, especially in Serangan, which is as I said, a weird place.

However, it is a pretty good venue for a Full Moon Run on Bali Hash House Harriers 2 (Two!) and last Saturday night we had just that. We took off at around 6pm from the Gold Island Beach Club and the sunset was spectacular. A swirling tangerine, orange and yellow mass shone brilliantly above. (As a meteorological condition it was fantastic, as “President” Trump’s hairdo, pathetic. Swirling orange and yellow masses belong in the sky not on a human head, if it is a human head, or in a tanning studio). Off paper, sorry. We hugged the beach for the first 10 minutes or so out of town and swung inland on a long jog by bodies of water to our left both refreshing and relaxing to be near. I was following Dancing Queen and daughter and to my credit, I think, actually caught up with them 3 times before I finally gave up the chase of two generations of the most ridiculously long legs I’ve ever seen on Scandanavians, or this side of Area 51.

At about 6.30 or so the sun did the disappearing trick and it very quickly got as dark as buggary. I can’t actually attest to how dark buggary is, but I bet it’s bloody dark. I was extremely thankful for Screaming Lord You Know What’s torch that he so serendipitously didn’t need and had loaned me (having of course left my own on top of a tool cabinet in the garage no more than three feet from the car). I would have been, yes, buggared without it. I suppose technically, it wasn’t really a Full Moon Run because the moon didn’t really show up during the run, as such. As a matter of fact it didn’t rear its gilded head until well after we got back to the Gold Island car park due to a bank of dark and hazy cloud on the horizon. When it did though it was fat, yellow-gold and glowing mysteriously like, you guessed it, the former host of “The Apprentice”, “Mister” Trump.

Remember this device all you budding Hash Trash writers: if you want to convey the suggestion of an insult to somebody, anybody really, but especially the aforementioned  “entity”, use inverted commas. Where was I? Drinking tall cans of Diablo beer on the beach on Serangan, which was a pleasant enough place to be of a Saturday night, and a pleasant enough brew to drink, and  being entertained by various individuals in the post-run circle. We owed all of this to the exertions of Beer Master and Hare Gizzard, for he’s a jolly good fellow. Night Jar lullabied us with a WW2 witty ditty in honour of D-Day, for he’s a jolly good Fellow as well, and Jangle Balls nod to the 50^th anniversary of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” (Hash version: “Loosening Their Bowels With Bad Timing”) four heaves a jolly “good” fe-hell-ow, and so say all of “us”. However, the event of the evening the “coupe de gras” (literally, the “cut the grass” or maybe “cheese”) was TA DAAAA: the Swedish National, Day I Love D.Q. “Nobody” is Perfect Dancing Queen is “Nobody” singlet – a perfect example of the use of inverted commas if I’ve ever seen one. His Swedish meatballs were also admirable, or we can leave his Swedish meatballs out of this if you like.

We all left appropriately tired, chock full of 5% strength dark lager and salt air, I s’pose you could say piss and wind. On on to none other than Mambal Swimming Pool next Saturday.

J.B.

Hash Trash for Lungsiakan Run#1321

A Guided Meditation for Hashing…floating Amongst the Muddy Drunken Foul Mouths

Hello, my name is (not) Jason Stephenson and for the next few minutes I will (not) be taking you on a deeply meditative journey (unlikely to be) the most relaxing and serene experience you have ever had short of passing out dead drunk in an Ubud alleyway with Hashers named “Blow Joe”, “Night Jar”, “Jangle Balls”or “Wooden Eye” (tinkly, whooshing new age “music”). Give your thoughts permission to leave you and take their own journey to return in the morning and find you with a hangover of Hiroshima proportions and a tongue tasting like the floor of a Mexican jail. Now let’s clean up those Cakra locations: first the lower Cakra which is located at the bottom of your spine in the general area of the arsehole, is a fiery orange swirl of flame, perhaps as the result of a calming Chicken Jalfraize at Little India in Jalan Cemara, Sanur. This Cakra is responsible for responsibility, feel it being cleansed in a rotary motion with a handful of Paseo Elegant (hygenic, soft and natural) tissue roll. (Long pause with more whooshing sounds).

But I jest of course, I take the piss, I remove the urine. I’m not serious about any of the above and I’m sure that Jason Stephenson is a fine young man totally dedicated to making a fortune on You Tube with New Age meditative blatant twaddle and buying a place in Coff’s Harbour with an ocean view. And I’m certainly not serious about our upstanding and sober Hashers, pillars of the community such as the respected video artist, handicraft entrepreneurs and self-described “national treasure” author mentioned above.

Ahem, so now (at last) to the Hash last week at Lungsiakan volley ball court, a mere folley pall’s (local pronunciation) throw away from the joys of downtown Ubud and not far from the Fly Cafe (Why the “Fly” Cafe? Somebody enlighten me).  It’s not as if this course was spectacularly novel, nor it must be said was the semi-permanent (har) Hare, who must just about have Hash Hare tenure at this point. I doubt if he’ll be taking a sabbatical though any time soon (our little buddy, bloody, cruddy Muddy). He readily admits that he likes the free beer privileges too much that go with Haring, in his refreshingly frank manner. But you must concur, this is the very quaintest of oft-used trails on the hash. It genuinely is picturesque (pronounced picture- skew) so let’s all give Muddy Man the clap he so richly deserves (spontaneous, deafening applause).

The view from atop Ubud Ridge to the valley below and surrounding countryside and scenery is as exotic a tropic panorama as you’ll see anywhere on this blue globe. It doesn’t matter how many times you gaze at it, it is truly remarkable. The impossibly quaint little eateries, temples, homestays and trickling gotts  along twisting and turning paths that wind through Ubud’s back blocks and out into the paddys after leaving the chaotic lunacy of the bridge area below the old “Beggar’s Bush”; now a wrong-headedly rainbow colored monstrosity that totally betrays its storied past, are mesmerizingly cute still. A more senior (cough) Hasher I was running with at this point called these alley ways “Lesbian Lanes”, don’t ask unless you’ve never been to planet Ubud. He will remain unnamed because he’s already got one (Spook, oops).

Where were we with our blocked Cakra cleansing? We don’t want our Cakras blocked, do we? Move your focus now to the second (or is it third Cakra), I can never remember when I’m thinking about what color Lamborghini I want. Ah screw it, I’ll get a red Mazerati. What? Oh yeah, Cakras. The Cakra around the area of the heart is bright green and shocking pink (as if you didn’t know) while we’re on the subject of colors. And this Cakra is intimately involved and caring in all matters of the, well, heart. Try now to picture in your third eye (no, not the brown one) this garishly ugly, no wait, this vibrant and spinning, swirling colorful vortex being scrubbed with a stiff brush and a fifty fifty solution of water and Porstex. Whoosh whoosh, tinkle tinkle. Or even better, have your own pembantu do it…

Alright, alright, enough of this levity nonsense. To the circle, where we were vastly entertained by the usual silly buggars, and while it was once again a hoot of unmatched comedic proportions, once again, we swiftly ran out of the amber ambrosia that fuels these occasions. I don’t profess to know what is going wrong here – there weren’t even any bottles left as far as I could tell – but something is going wrongedy, wrongedy wrongo. Let’s hope the upcoming mismanagement meeting can take this dilemma, the horns of which we are upon, and grapple with these very horns.

On on, J.B.

Once a Jolly Thingamabob Camped by a Whatchicallit

Some people, by which I mean whatsisface and whosit, tell me that the lingo used in “Waltzing Matilda” is so antiquated these days as to be meaningless to the average Australian by whom I mean Mr. Abdullah Hizbollah and Mrs. Fatima Talib. To this I say something derogatorily up-to-the-minute and rapier sharp such as “poppycock” or “tally whacker” or one of those “I’m down with that shit” (or is it “I’m down with the shits”) “fly” (house or blow, I must admit I’m not sure) expressions.

But seriously folks, it’s reasonably easy for anybody with half a brain, Donald J. Trump for example, to figure out that a “Matilda” is a “swag”, a “coolibah” is a “billabong” and a “jumbuck” is a male bodily part. A “tucker bag” is of course to anyone with the most rudimentary grasp of 19^th century Aussie bush argot, a “bag’’ with “tucker” in it. But truly rooley seriously folks, being a “fair true” and “blue dinkum” kind of a “cove” myself, I am actually sort of touched every time I hear what really should be our national anthem in any fair estimation. As opposed to the dirge–like, couldn’t-inspire-a-fart-out-of-a-draft-horse, guaranteed-to-induce-coma-like-symptoms “Advance Australia Fair”, an uplifting ditty about a suicidal, kleptomaniac, outback hobo phantom who’s not the sharpest tea leaf in the boiling billie is a huge improvement and causes many an antipodean heart to swell with pride. Mine does, and I’m not even mildly kidding, I have no idea why.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “Did you see Misty Rain in ‘Foursome Party in Prague’?. God she was good.” No that’s not what you’re thinking, that’s what I’m thinking. You’re thinking “Why is this idiot banging on about “Waltzing Matilda?” Two reasons (how many? TWO!) 1. To shamelessly fill out and plump up a “Hash Trash” which would otherwise go something like: “First we ran away from the setting sun, then we ran towards it. The end.” 2. Last week’s run commemorated Anzac Day.

Slouch hats orf to Rocks Orf and (no way you’ll guess this: Muddy Man!) for a memorable run indeed. Although quite brief, 5K on the short, it was some of the best scenery we’ve enjoyed recently. Two (TWO!) river crossings as promised were spectacular from all view points both up and down the valleys and guaranteed that we wouldn’t be on in for every bit of an hour at least. The second crossing was Gallipolee-like in its drama. It must have pissed down convincingly up country: what M.M. informed us was a waist high but no-problem traverse was actually a struggle against swift and swirling waters clinging to semi-submerged bamboo and a chain of other Hashers clutching one another’s hands for dear life. It was chin high to me at one point, however, I WAS on a 45 degree angle, legs dangling in the rushing flow at the time.

Hero of the day was Dancing Queen who, with others, stayed on at the crossing to assist damsels in distress. I honestly couldn’t see much point in my hanging around getting underfoot, all things considered, including my vertically challenged situation. I hiked up the never ending flagstone steps, past the school, crossroads and on in to the wantilan ‘round the corner. Muddy Man greeted me grinningly, beer in hand and a mental image of me upending him into the soft drink cooler flashed momentarily before my eyes (kidding, not).

The circle, it was decided, would be held outside the less than perfect acoustics of the wantilan which would discourage Hashers from sitting on the stage area near the beer truck or around the Hash Cash table; a good idea as it turned out that almost worked. There were still lager malingerers though, who joined the circle at their pleasure (you know who you are, lucky you, I can barely remember who I am). But it worked out pretty well, was a good circle and we all got to sing “Waltzing Matilda”, even Swedes and eek, Germans joined in. We mentioned the war but we think we got away with it.

Hungarians and Norwegians grabbed their jolly jumbucks with glee and shoved them lustily into their tucker bags. It was an inernational coolibah and swag fest that was nothing short of stirring. What is it with that song? Certainly more than the sum of its parts, that’s for sure whether it’s Slim Dusty, Rod Stewart or Tom Waits singing it there is something unaccountably touching and engaging about it. Screw “Advance Australia Fair”. I’ve never heard Rod Stewart’s version of that.

On on

J.B.

Night of the Flying False Fangs

Hash Trash for Run #1314 Blakiuh Swimming Pool 1-Apr-2017

Grand Master Night Jar had just finished enlightening us on the origins of April Fools’ or All Fools’ Day and then regaling the throng with a side splitting rendition of “I Used To Work In Department Store In Chicago (but I don’t work there no more)” last Saturday evening. An appreciative crowd roared their approval and gave him a hearty “Glory Glory Hallejulah” with a side order of a down-down administered by Grocer John.

Perhaps it was a change of lager from the usual Bali Hai to the somewhat more fortified Diablo, but something did not agree with the Grand One’s tonsil environment and the amber article came racing back with a vengeance. It was something you don’t see often with the G.M., he usually likes to keep his beer where he deposits it. But on this occasion not only did the liquid for jolly good company come gushing back up at speed, but it was accompanied by his false teeth, and I tell you I was glad not to have been in the trajectory path of those urgent projectiles.

 The countryside around the Blakiuh pool echoed with the ejaculated enquiry “Where’s my facking teeth?” and helpful souls (not me) rushed into centre circle to assist with the search brandishing various forms of illumination. It was a mercifully short period before the miscreant molars, wayward canines and peripetatic bicuspids were located and returned to their rightful owner. They were not damaged in any way or crushed under a well-meaning Hash shoe, fortunately.

Night Jar replaced them in their customary location and muttered something like “Everybody can stop looking now”. And the drama had come to a close, the curtain was down on the highlight of the circle. Just thought I’d mention it. To those who weren’t there, more fool you. And Night Jar, I’m not taking the piss, you must admit it was pretty funny.

In what has become a recent Hash device last week’s was a great run employing rarely used areas in sparklingly novel ways at an oft-used Hash site, re-Hashing, if I may (Har). Is it possible that Hares have actually been reading the Trash and thus following this trend or is it a complete co-inky dinky? I’m going with the latter. As of last count I have a readership of approximately three and I suspect those of harboring problems in the reading ability area, or at least being challenged in that of literary taste. But I jape, for no apparent purpose other than word count.

In last Saturday’s case it was the Blakiuh Pool car park(s) in which we found ourselves. It’s not as if we haven’t been there before but Hares Black Forest and co. managed to find trails and byways that weren’t that familiar despite the location being evidently changed at the last minute. There was (ahemmedy hem) something of a excess of asphalt in the opening stages of the run and perhaps an over reliance of paddy in the final leg but the jungle section in the middle was undiluted magic. As one circle wag put it – the middle bit was the best run of the day.

A reasonably entertaining interlude which I’ll call “The Battle of Odin and Thor” developed in mid paddys between Dancing Queen (a tall Swede) and Horny Herring (a taller Norvegicus). It proceded thus: “Vhy are jou yust yumping in front of me Horny? Are jou yust too embarrassed to be behind like jusual”. “Nooo, Because I am yust a betterr runnerr than jou”. I almost expected the ultimate Scandinavian gauntlet to be thrown down: “Do you vant to have a drinkink competition?” (Delivered in sing song, hurdy gurdy tones.) But it didn’t come to that, them’s fightin’ words among Norsky folk.

Meanwhile, back at the Rancho Circle “P” (Pissartists) a multitude of virgins were slaughtered with wet and rubbery shrubbery and Jangle Balls sang “Ghost Hashers in the Sky” (again) for our many Seppo guests, one of whose Hash name was “Shut the Fuck Up”. A lot of fun was had with that. Being April Fools’ Day Donald Trump’s assassination was announced to deafening approval, you could hear it in Sumbawa. Some wise American quotes were recited such as former G.M. CEO Lee Iococca’s gem “We have to ask ourselves ‘how much clean air do we need?’ ’’ and anti-smoking campaigner Brooke Shields’ “If you die you lose an important part of your life.” Indeed, if not your brain.

Anyway, we all enjoyed it, the circle that is, not dying, and look forward to a reprise next week at Bali Gula with Pussy Delivery and Rabid Mangy (GOOD JOB) Dog.

Yes, you read that sentence correctly….

On On …

J.B.