Run 1605, October 23, 2013
Tunnel Vision
By Golden Balls
 |
| “You want some?” – No thanks. |
Where’s the run? Shing Mun Reservoir? Whaaaat?? Seemed to be the mantra for this run. A map had been sent out, guesswork more than anything else, and which turned out to be correct, but it wasn’t good enough for Velcro Lips, who’d huffed off home with a swingeing email. Ouch! Must do better.
There was nobody around at the guessed-at start, so I rode my taxi to the main dam but found nothing. With the taxi gone I walked back towards the barbecue pits in the dark. Monkeys howled eerily and skittered in the trees and along the reservoir road. Talk about creepy. I was glad to see the convoy, which had arrived after me, parked up at the pits. The monkeys were still howling and gibbering all around as Moonie and I armed ourselves with stout sticks to ward off attacks from our country cousins. Eunuch gave his briefing as the fuzz drove slowly past. “They’re not gonna do us for parking, are they?” says Moonie. Then, screwing up his eyes and tapping away with his white stick, “I didn’t know it was a no-parking, zone, your honour.” Thus we set off up the steps towards Smuggler’s Ridge –
It was good to be back on the Northern. I’d done a couple of hashes in England, good interesting trails, but where the hares (never just one but two or three) shepherd you around, pop up offering shortcuts, insist on several hash halts (“to keep the pack together”) and generally behave too bloody helpfully. Go West, who I’d visited in Devon, revealed that his local hash hides sweets in the bushes at their halts. He wept openly. So it was great to be sent off into the pitch black night of screeching simians, knowing that nobody would give a damn if you fell down a cliff or were torn limb from limb by crazed macaques. On out!
Trail went up towards the ridge, then veered left off the path into the forest, then into the WWII military tunnels. G-Spot, with whom I was perambulating, led me out of the first tunnel and into the shiggy climb, whereupon he disappeared into the night. I was crap and took ages to climb the shiggy – never saw anybody again. Except the hare, who inexplicably popped up near the second tunnel section, a long one in a maze of subterranean routes called Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue and so on. Without a torch it would have been creepy, but as it was all I saw were two chit-chats and a long-legged centipede.
Emerging from the tunnels I got lost for a bit before finding trail down a slippery shiggy slope emerging near where the MacLehose hits the main dam, and took the wimp option back to the pits. Everybody was already back from the rambos, and I had to endure scurrilous accusations of having “laid” my own markings on trail. Also, while we were out, a gang of bright young things in short-shorts and singlets had colonized the pits and were blackening chicken wings on sticks. As a couple of them wandered away into the shadows Eunuch was heard postulating that they were “carpetting off”.
 |
| A now discredited form of carpetting off |
Mango led the raucous circle, which was hilarious, but the only thing I remember was when hare said he was about to deliver a sermon, but Mango thought he said he was about to deliver semen, so he kept his mouth shut. But then, he also talked about a big snake coming across his face (on a Sha Lo Tung run river-swim section). Glass houses I say. And rocks. Lots of them.
A splendid subterranean effort and good shiggy from Eunuch.
Present: Eunuch, Mango Groove, One Eyed Jack, Moonie, Golden Balls, Luk Sup Gow, G-Spot, 99 monkeys.
Next week: Moonie
Northern New Territories Hash 