Spooky Action

“I’m not driving, I’ll join you in the taxi,” said Dram, “because I want to have a few beers after the run.” So Dram, Serbian Bomber and Golden Balls met at Ma On Shan station and after blundering around for a while located a cab, getting to the start at 7.45 to find Luk Sup Gow and the hare Dingaling, who said the GM had set the pack off at 7.30. But we didn’t care because we’d been in the best taxi ever – the jukebox taxi, where you can request songs from a list and sing along with the driver. By the time we reached Ma On Shan park we’d wrapped our tonsils around Can’t Buy Me Love, Like A Virgin, Beat It, Suspicious Minds and Delilah.

Ever prepared for action, Serbian Bomber was off like a shot, bristling with gadgetry. Dram left a couple of minutes later after changing his shorts, while I was last away after a full kit change. Trail went up the steps opposite the park and along the ridge, where I passed Dram, then down increasingly steeply to the ravine and across a small dam. On the way down the lights of the back markers of the front pack could be seen ascending the hill to the south. Serbian could be heard calling up the hill, and as I ascended Dram came up behind me, or so I thought – but it was One Eyed Jack, who was even later than us. “Did you see Dram?” I asked. “No,” came the reply. Obviously quantum biology was at work here, or quantum mechanics acting at the particle level where said particle can appear to be in more than one place at the same time, something Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”. How else could One Eyed Jack have ghosted past Dram? Worse was to come when One Eyed Jack and I got to the finish before Serbian Bomber, despite not passing him on trail! Woo-ooo-oooo.

Meanwhile, at the front of the pack Catch Of The Day was showing a clean pair of heels to the pack and was well ahead, until Mango Groove abruptly caught her in a densely forested area. “Catch Of The Day, are you OK?” enquired the concerned Mango, thinking only an injury could have slowed her down so spectacularly. “Spiders!” came the panicked arachnophobic response. And so brave Mango went to the front and collected all the arachnids for the pack. Trail went up up up to the trig point and then left down to a hamlet with barking dogs as Gaele Says No hit the front and stayed there to the finish. Other harriers on trail were Eunuch, Liberace, Stingray and Velcro Lips.

At the bucket the craic was boisterous and the beer supply dwindled rapidly as we waited for Dram … and waited … and waited. An attempt by GM2 Serbian Bomber to get the circle started was thwarted by the GM, who said we had to wait for Dram, at which Mango got all self-righteous about the time nine years ago at Luk Keng when he was out for three hours and when he got back everybody had gone, leaving on the pavement only his bag and two tinnies – of soft drinks! Mango took this perceived injustice and worked himself up into quite a state, demanding that Dram be afforded the same treatment, and that we drink all the beer before he got back.

Finally somebody called Dram to find he’d taken the wrong path from the trig point and was floundering about in some lost valley. Catch Of The Day and Liberace took off in COTD’s car while Dram was instructed to head back up to the trig point and this time take the path with markings on it down to the road, and soon he was back at the finish and tucking in to the last of the booze as the circle started, down-downs administered from a bottle by Catch Of The Day direct to mouth as she celebrated yet another sacking. Good run and entertaining circle. – Golden Balls