St. George and the 5 Chinese Crackers

History was never my forte at school so bear with me and let’s see if I’ve got this right (generally): The English were a bunch of shopkeepers, which is just as well as they had a big empire to run. They had stiff upper lips in the noonday sun and “pith” helmets (I’m not sure if this is a mithpronunthiation). They employed understatement saying things like “Good God sir, I believe I’ve lost my leg” when they lost their legs. St. George is their Patron Saint and he vanquished Margaret Thatcher who is not in the fossil record and is therefore probably mythical, like a unicorn. He (St. George, not Mrs. Thatcher) was dressed as Ned Kelly in a nightie at the time, but he never actually went to England so this must have taken place (or not) somewhere else, possibly Turkey or Melbourne, Australia. Does that just about wrap it up? In a nut shell anyway? I think I got the gist of it.

But seriously folks, St George’s day was celebrated at last week’s Hash in Petang. The actual timing of his illustrious career of avoiding his adopted homeland like the plague, his origins and his sexual persuasions were hotly debated before the run. For some reason I thought he had something to do with the Crusades, but this was dismissed by Grand Master Night Jar as too late in the historical piece, plus “he was a poof anyway”. I stood corrected, apparently, and bowed to the Grand One’s superior knowledge as he was probably there at the time and read about it in the tabloids, “The Constantinople Mirror” perhaps (har, kidding, kind of).

The run was an absolute rip snorter and one that Muddy Man, believe it or not, had unbelievably nothing to do with. Our thanks for Saturday’s splendid course go squarely to John the Baptist, AKA Labia and I believe Labia Minor and Rabid Mangy dog not the Baptists. Hope I got that right, I did happen on a helpful R.M.D. dressed more like Batman or Mandrake the Magician than St. G just before the ON IN but at least he put in a sartorial effort that no one else did.

The trail was all pretty much ups and downs of course being located in hilly Petang and a whole lot of imposing igneous-looking rock. There was one stretch where having completed a fairly serious up up from a river to a paddy section, we were confronted by a rocky face that looked the size of Uluruh (or what used to be Ayer’s Rock – this was a bit presumptuous of old Ayer whoever he was, by the way; a bit like me expecting everybody to call Gunung Agung “Mt. Jangle Balls” because I saw it once).

Anyhoo, stop me if I’ve mentioned this before, I don’t do up ups too well and by the time I was half way up this obstruction I wanted to make it stop more than I wanted world peace, fabulous riches or eternal youth. After this terrible suffering however, I was rewarded with soothing, sweeping, untouched, tropical countryside views from the mostly descending serpentine asphalt road of the ON IN, just friggin’ lovely. That’s all I can say.

Back at the Petang Rafting car park, we lined up for delicious baked spuds replete with sour cream and bacon courtesy of (shit, I hope this is right, Café Smorgas). And of course, lashings of beer, in case you didn’t know beer came in them. Of course St. George was a keen baked spuds and sour cream man and mighty piss artist, as we historically know, and consumed a lot of these things when he was busy not being in England.

The circle was also, once again, a great deal of fun. Not a lot of virgin baptising went on (one is not a lot) but R.A. Dancing Queen introduced us to all manner of lesser known Saints including St. Gudang of Hungary, St. Tin Tin Balls of Belgium, St. Jean Le Batiste of Milton Keynes and, Himself, St D.Q. Svenska of Stockholm. Bishop Night Jar sang us a lullaby about old King Cole who called for all manner of, frankly, weird shit in the middle of the night.

Jangle Balls, as it turns out a lesser known Saint himself from the Fremantle, Western Australian Diocese presided over the strategic placement of five Chinese crackers up the arseholes of as many English people (do the math) for later detonation accompanied by “Rule Britannia” (marmalade and jam) and his usual manic gesticulations. Fortunately most of this took place in his beer flooded imagination.

This week I travelled, in the lack of a navigator, with the “Sanur Bus” group, brainchild of His Royal Majesty and newly minted Saint D.Queen of Smorgas. I must say I enjoyed this immensely, both the relaxing trip up to Petang NOT driving and wrangling my way through the traffic and the atmosphere of good fellowship and a certain quality in the confines of the bus that can only be called “beer” on the way back.

Like I needed any more, need schmeed.

On on, J.B.