Tai Po is certainly the centre of the NT pub universe. The run took in 12 pubs, many of them newcomers, and left maybe another 20 untouched. Highlights were randomly assigned sharpeners in the form of tequila on top of the normal beer booze; the GM’s raffle (we’re all dying to find out how Catch of the Day’s new double-pronged “consoler” works); a pizza stop halfway round; and even a bout of carol singing in the later stages of the run. I’m afraid there’s not much of a report as memory fails me (singing songs from Blood on the Tracks in the Bobby London? Women pulling blokes’ pants down?) and the photographer ladies, at least three of whom were snapping away on the night, have been strangely silent in response to photo requests. Perhaps it was all a lot worse than we realise…
Correction: Pictures were sent. Humble apologies, Walky Talky. Here’s the gallery:
The results are brought to us this week by ace football correspondent Stingray
EASTERN 7 – 1 TAI PO: Woeful performance against LSW last week, N2TH3 look to get back on winning track. (Fanling Sports Ground closed ? ed.)
HONG KONG 1 – 3 VIETNAM: Prematch Interview: manager Serbian stresses importance of tight marking mixed with lateral and reverse logic.
MAN CITY 1 – 0 EVERTON: Team bus and Team drugs go to wrong location, Eunuch misses kick off. Referee issues red cad to vacant space in line up.
BIRMINGHAM CITY LADIES 2 – 2 NOTTS COUNTY LADIES: GM Lips leads storming start but chaos follows closely, symptomatic of the following 3 hours.
NORTH KOREA 0 – 0 SOUTH KOREA: Pitch invasion by yelping puppy highlight of tedious first half. (or was it Liberace ed.)
KOBE 1 – 2 KAWASAKI-F: A game of two halves Wimps or Rambos has Catch of the Day in heated OCC debate.
NEWCASTLE 2 – 1 CHELSEA: Extended foreward play leaves leaders exposed at check back as Stingray surges ahead with a brilliantly conceived and meticulously executed counter attack.
LIVERPOOL 0 – 0 SUNDERLAND: Veteran Mango only manages short cut with boy friend. Is it the end for the past Liverpool hero. Two more yellow cards for the merseysiders.
SOTON 1 – 2 MAN UTD: Penile Dementia matches look-a-like Wayne Rooney, equaling his scoring record and scraping the Reds home in their usual lucky style.
STOKE 3 – 2 ARSENAL: G Balls begging continual advice still comes up just short. Fans urge a new diet or a hunger strike.
QPR 2 – 0 BURNLEY: There was no Cup in the circle after this rock bottom performance, GM Lips tries to stand tall but the celebrations have been canned. TIUTABIAMAFFW sent back to UK for psychological repairs.
LUTON 3 – 0 MANSFIELD: Fresh name calling and abuse in the home boy crowd alienates true fans and prompts a press blackout
JAPAN 1 – 4 COLOMBIA: Shock admission of Japan star pissing about, leaves football authorities demanding video replay evidence.
WEST HAM 3 – 1 SWANSEA: Manager admits ‘if we could only get back Stingray, we would be unbeatable’.
Next Week: TAIPO WORLD CUP KNOCKOUT FINALS Line-up likely to feature Kings Belly, 133, Hungry Hippo, Magic Penguin, Bar Pacific, M1, Baby Q, Just Bar, Barbie Bar, Life Bar, After 5, guests and hangers on. Gili Galu is just returning from suspension and may make the team.
By Serbian Spammer Bomber Baron Diver von Moosheime
Not the latest Banksy but the hares’ gps of the trail. This masterpiece took 5 hours to set.
Oh my! A joint run with LSWH3; Moonie’s idea as part of the “12 Hashes of Christmas”, so it’s all his fault. And the lazy git didn’t even run, claiming to have a dodgy back. Dodgy excuse, if you ask me. I think he just didn’t want to run in the drizzle; feel the sensation of the rain softly kissing his arse (oops – I’ve slipped into romantic writing mode…)
I missed the instructions from hares Master Grinder and Anal Invitation; being an N2TH3 hasher I turned up 15 minutes late and everyone was gone by then (except Moonie). I had hoped to advise everyone to avoid the exploding pig-traps (improvised IED – one blew up in my local Seven-11 and made the TV news earlier this week). But you were all gone, so tough luck if you came back with half a leg missing, Mango. While I was shrugging off my jacket and pulling down my pants (yes – I had shorts underneath – I wasn’t going commando) Moonie STRONGLY advised me to do the 7km wimps’ run rather than the 100km super-rambos’. Which, given the quality of the markings, turned out to be sound advice.
So, off I ran, up the steps and found the check, marked with a very small arrow. I met Motormouth about 20 metres from here, asking me if I knew which way was trail. And I did. So I led on; now only second last. Up the road; into the first set of shiggy; met the next runner (or rather heard his call from a path higher up and got left behind while I figured out how to get there). Not to worry, I thought: I’ll soon catch up.
Ha Ha Ha. Famous last words.
Emerging onto the road I followed the arrow; trail; money? Why is there money? (Remember that I missed the briefing.) Found the checkback. Wasted 15 minutes trying to find some way off the checkback and decided to return to the start… BUT by the time I got to the arrow where I had emerged onto the road someone had drawn a very small arrow pointing 180 degrees the other way. Seriously – it was like one inch. So gamely I continued on. Big mistake.
On and on I went – but no sign of trail. Then I noticed a faint purple arrow. Billions of bilious blistering blue barnacles! Who draws arrows in purple for a night run in the wet? This is worse than my own trail markings…Reached a car park. No trail. Saw a security booth and asked the attendant – who pointed me in the right direction. Just as I was thinking I would give up and return to the start I finally found faint purple trail pointing over a bridge and found a lost hasher on the far side. Parky. Aha! Another Hasher. I must be going the right way.
He told me that some “Chinese” hasher had gone up the road and never returned which, I told him, was an obvious indicator of trail (and an indicator of non-trail-calling Liberace). Off we went. Up up up that long road up Beacon Hill. Bloody boring route. To pass the time, Parky told me some of the history of LSWH3 and I retaliated by giving him the detailed etymology of my full hash name, Serbian Spammer Bomber Baron Diver von Mooseheime. By the way he started lagging back and encouraging me to run and not worry about staying with him, I knew I’d got the better of that exchange.
Í found the wimps-rambos split and, remembering Moonie’s advice, decided that discretion is the better part of valour, and since I couldn’t hear anybody else calling ahead of me opted for the wimps run. Down the path from Beacon Hill towards Eagle’s Nest, then down the turning to So Uk. And down. And down. On this part of the trail the hare had finally remembered he was supposed to leave markings to follow. But sadly at the bottom he forgot. So after 5 minutes of casting about for the hare’s footprints I figured out the route and, using my extensive fieldcraft, cunningly crafted an arrow of leaves for Parky to follow when he finally got to the bottom of the hill.
Now the trail followed road, through the wilderness of Shek Kip Mei, past the barrens of the tennis courts. Soon I heard the pounding of foosteps and was overtaken by Liberace. Not long thereafter I reached the end and found beer. But not so many returned runners.
Strangely Golden Balls and Catch Of The Day were there already. I just couldn’t imagine them finishing at the same time, but then I found out that instead of running they had sat in a bar drinking Bloody Marys. Even stranger, this was because COTD was too tired because she had been humping around 20kg of iron all day just in case she needed to make a ladder. She was somewhat pie-eyed from being plied with alcohol so I decided she was another suitable victim for the etymology of my name (well, she asked for it). So I explained. And I explained. And then I explained some more. Finally, I attempted to explain how the German part of the name related to the transferable mouth skills I had learned playing in a brass band. Sadly, COTD felt that her English language skills were not up to understanding the various double entendres involved in this, but I think she would like a lesson, so if anyone has the time, you can give her one. GB certainly got it when I explained that years ago, I had played solo horn. Unfortunately, by then he was looking too hard for double entendres because that was unintended…
Fortunately for Catch Of The Day, other runners had started to return by that point. So GB dragged me over to corner some of them and give them ear-ache instead.
I noticed that Tangerine Dream was lurking, pouncing on unsuspecting runners dragging their feet home, to force raffle tickets on them while they were too weak to resist. She was muttering something about proceeds going to charity… HA! A likely tale. More likely, batteries for her rabbit while Moonie’s back is bad…
While the returning rambos were discussing their (mostly nonexistent) trail it transpired that Liberace had only managed a few metres of the rambo split before getting lost and returning to the split to run the wimps. Mango arrived in a taxi, having lost half of his knee and banged his head. He is under the impression that this was somehow Eunuch’s fault, but remember the pig trap IEDs… I think Mango mistook the force of the blast for the impact caused by a collision with a fellow hasher… Hopeless returned bleeding from the nipples and spitting blood so obviously Mango wasn’t the only casualty… Frank The Plank had given up too and when he found himself at Shek Kip Mei MTR had told them he was lost and could they help him get to Kowloon Tong with a free ticket (which they did). Kudos for inspired blagging.
For some reason, LSW had organized food – pizzas – for before the circle rather than after. So circle only got started after 10pm – a perfect time to disturb the local residents. Since the police were somewhat busy in Mong Kok and Admiralty we got away with it. Velcro Lips was AWOL, so I stood up as GM and might have been a little too loud as I called the circle to order. Things were somewhat anarchic and I was soon down-downed for losing control of the circle. Since it was drizzling I had my umbrella with me in the circle; I needed it when I found myself standing next to Liberace.
P.S. Does anyone else want to know about my name?
…and here’s Moonie dispensing pisspots of ale at the “12 Hashes of Christmas” the following night (Thursday/South Side)
The end of Tai Shue Ha Road West was the venue for run 1666. Not a hard place to find, one might think, but several hashers struggled to do so in one way or another, most notably Penile Dementia (formerly Oranguwank or possibly Oranguwang; a matter of some controversy and heated discussion at run 1665) and his passenger Catch of the Day, who drove to the correct location, found it not to their liking, and spent a happy half hour touring Tai Tong in search of a better place. Meanwhile, not to be outdone in the incompetence stakes, Gunpowder Plod was on his phone busily misdirecting a N2TH3 newbie, “Fiona” (or, conceivably, “Fee Owner”) around the outer precincts of that motorist’s nightmare, Yuen Long.
By 7.45 Eunuch, Mango Groove and the all-important beer had still not arrived. Golden Jelly had retired to her vehicle for a well-earned nap and the other assembled hashers (Plod, Serbian “Spammer” Bomber, Tooth-hurtee, Inflatadate and Shamus O’Pressed) were agitating for a briefing from hare Golden Balls. GM Velcro Lips told him to get on with it and the group hit the trail, plunging straight into some shiggy woodland, just as Eunuch was parking.
Emerging onto the northern arm of the 5km road loop, the trail stuck to the road for several hundred yards before abruptly ascending a rocky slope. A bit of a scramble followed, then some nice trail before rejoining the road higher up. Here those of a wimpy disposition were directed right while rambos went left – an arrangement which caused much indignation among those (mainly Velcro Lips) who remembered Golden Balls’ briefing, in which he had drawn arrows indicating a reverse scenario.
Somewhere around this point, Serbian Bomber contrived to get lost. Meanwhile the rest of the rambos were scrambling up a hill at a brisk pace. Shamus O’Pressed (that’s me), whose torch was rapidly fading, huffed and puffed to keep in touch with the gazelle-like hashers in front of him, but their encouraging cries of “Trail!” got ever more distant and he soon found himself squinting for dimly-lit patches of flour in the silence.
Following a nice bit of downhill ridge-running and a shiggy descent to the Tai Tong – Tai Shue Ha gap, the trail eventually rejoined the road for an extended On Home section. A compact pack of rambos, led by Tooth-hurtee, reached home after about 45 minutes. Shamus trotted in 10 minutes later, and there followed a protracted wait for Serbian Bomber. Appeals by the hare for a search party to be sent out were met with general indifference.
The circle was eventually convened and Velcro led the ritual humiliations of hapless hashers, before handing over to RA Mango Groove, at which point chaos ensued. Possessed by some manic urge to rename everyone in sight, the RA first singled out Tooth-hurtee, who briefly became “Can’t Get it Up” – a reference to his clapped-out old Jag and possibly the shortest-lived name in hash history – before an increasingly deranged Mango wildly insisted that the bemused former Tooth-hurtee be again renamed, this time as “Six-thirty”, or rather, “Luk Dim Boon”. Not content with the level of confusion, the RA rounded on Inflatadate, dubbing him “Oranguwank” – the name recently vacated by Penile Dementia. Proceedings were then further disrupted by the sensational reappearance of Serbian Bomber, running in from the outgoing direction, who barged straight into the circle to ironic cheers, accepted a down-down, and uttered dark mutterings about an ambiguously marked check on the trail.
Order was eventually restored and the hashers consumed (more) beers and tasty hot dogs cooked up by Golden Jelly and Golden Balls.
Northern New Territories Hash 