The Almost Fatal Shore

A larger than average pack of 16 hashers turned up for this pre-public holiday run at the usual park in Yuen Long. But it wasn’t the usual Yuen Long trail, which tends to go for the hills south of Yuen Long. No, this week’s briefing was a bit different. “Head straight up the pedestrian flyover,” said hare Golden Balls, “go through Yoho shopping centre, go through the railway station and pick up trail on the north side. Expect the unexpected!”

With this bizarre directive ringing in their ears, Penile Dementia, Walkie Talkie, Luk Dim Boon, Eunuch, One Eyed Jack, Catch Of The Day, Stingray, Billy Jizz, Liberace, Red Rump, Mango Groove, Dingaling and Sam the dog cantered off into the hot night and sure enough picked up trail heading north straight through the village. Meanwhile, wimps Velcro Lips, Dram and Smooth Operator had been instructed to get in Golden Jelly’s car to be driven to the wimps’ start – which was Nam Sang Wai ferry. They were briefed to follow trail and if they saw the rambos, to keep quiet. Very mysterious.

The rambo meanwhile went up aa little bit, along to a check back that claimed Eunuch and One Eyed Jack, who spent 10 minutes lost, down through a village, along some country track and up a scramble to a farm before pushing through to Kam Tin River and the ferry. Now some of the pack had been on the notorious 2009 Nam Sang Wai run that had almost resulted in a number of hashers disappearing into the quickmud of this stinking brook, so expectation, or dread, was high, or low, depending on whether you’d been on that run or not (report on that run is reproduced below). But everybody piled onto the rickety old sampan after seeing the sign “TAKE FERRY PAID” chalked on the landing stage, except Dingaling and Sam, who were late, and Eunuch and One Eyed Jack, who took an even later sailing.

Once on the Nam Sang Wai peninsula there was a beautiful kilometre or so of running through open wooded terrain and grass. The savvy expected trail to head for the wetland tracks, but all it did was return almost the same way to the ferry, only this time along the sea wall rather than through the woods. This accounted for the wimps being told to keep quiet. It turned out that the hare had been unable to make any headway into the wetland tracks, which are now all overgrown and impassable without a machete. “And I was riding my bike there only three years ago,” sniffed the disconsolate hare.

The shenanigans weren’t over as GB, who’d been lurking at the ferry to pay the boatman, live-hared the bit back to the park. Only Catch Of The Day and Stingray passed him – at the railway station – so when he saw Luk Dim Boon, Billy Jizz, Red Rump, Liberace, Mango Groove and Walkie Talkie already cracking tinnies on his return the short-cutting accusations – and fervent denials – came thick and fast. More spooky action.

It mattered not as everybody was soon back. We were even joined by non-runners G-Spot and Fartypants for a raucous circle, followed at 11 by a trip to the licenced daipaidong near the other “park”. Yes, the lovely government in its pious concern for our well-being has stopped restaurants putting tables out on the pavement. The journey to the daipaidong claimed a few – we didn’t all make it! – Golden Balls

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Run 1483 Mystery Hare (Nam Sang Wai, Yuen Long)

Well where shall we start my little chubby eggs, sit firmly on you backsides and we shall begin our little story-time…let us just call it “The Return of ANTI-HASH”. We should have seen it coming…in the days leading up to this run our Hare Raiser Stingray was desperately trying to find a hare to replace the pre-advertised Victim.. poor sod, he even had to turn to the SKH3 just to recruit someone. In the end, the run this week was advertised as a mystery hare and as is now common practice when we have a mystery hare the pack number swells dramatically as stalwart N2TH3 members turn up in droves hoping that the said mystery hare could be one of our past superstars.

Actually, as we arrived at Nam Sang Wai things were looking good, as it appeared that Go West had set the run as he was back for a few days and as we all know a Go West run is an absolute pleasurable experience…lovely well marked clean delicious trail…not very taxing on the brain…yes the sort of thing we all look forward to on a Wednesday evening in July, a short pleasant jaunt around the wetlands before a nice cooling beer. As we all gathered together waiting for instructions Gunpowder Plod was getting impatient and tried to get things started but Mango Groove was having none of this, sternly reminding Gunpowder Plod that he is GM tonight and we should wait for Eunuch as he has the beer. After some mulling around eventually Go West handed out instructions that went something like “Err.. flour.. paper.. chalk… rambo / wimps run… errr.. should be about one hour!”.

So off we went… Brainiac and Walkie Talkie led us nicely off heading pretty much into the trails behind the villages. One Eyed Jack and Gunpowder Plod also did a great job with the checks, leaving Eunuch and Luk Sup Gow with very little to do apart from keeping an eye on Go West, who appeared to be sweeping his own run. As we headed into the long grass we appeared to miss three of the starting pack, namely G-Spot, Golden Jelly and Golden Balls…actually Mango and Eunuch noticed the sudden reduction in numbers and tried their best to call but they themselves were a little lost as they spotted One Eyed Jack disappearing in what they figured must have been the wrong direction. After some extra farting about Gunpowder Plod, Walkie Talkie, Eunuch, Brainiac, Go West, Stingray And Mango all ended up at a check near a small house on the river bank. After some intense checking the pack were getting a little bit pissed off pleading with Go West to tell them where to go as LSG and One Eyed Jack would be back at the buckets by now consuming all the lovely cold Skol. What then followed were probably the best two hash quotes so far this year. First Go West: “Actually I have a confession to make…I didn’t set this run, Golden Balls did,” followed by Eunuch: “I was actually enjoying this run but now I know Golden Balls had something to do with it I think it’s a pile of wank.”

Having worked out that Go West had no bloody idea where we were going the master brains of the group had a brilliant ANTI-HASH moment… I know, let’s ask this nice man if he could take us across the river in his sampan thingy. As we jumped on board, Stingray appeared to know him as he showed him a watch that his Hongkong Hash mates had given him as payment on a previous run. Now this was all well and good, but Mango started to worry as he asked the others if anyone had any money… not a frigging sausage, so as soon as the sampan touched the other side we jumped off without paying. But things got even worse as we immediately realized that we should not have crossed the river as now we had a mega-run to get back and at some point we had to cross the river again anyway. We couldn’t go back to the nice sampan man as we had just done a major skank on him so we had no choice but to head for the city lights. As we ran around, Brainiac suggested that we should all stick together, which we all agreed made good sense just in case we got attacked by a pack of nasty dogs. Eventually we came back onto the river that we needed to cross, it didn’t look too bad, very little water, should be easy… so Eunuch and Mango went in first… somehow Eunuch managed to steer clear of most of the mud but Mango had no such luck as he ended up waist high in some of the most disgusting shitty smelling stuff you could ever imagine. Next to go in was Walkie Talkie, who began to scream “Help, help! I’m sinking!” Not one to miss an opportunity to rescue a damsel in distress, STINGRAY rushed to Walkie Talkie’s aid, managing to pull her out but in the process getting stuck himself, and as he began to sink into the slime he too started shouting for help …Go West rushed in, helping to pull Stingers out – minus his shoes. Eventually we managed to clamber up the river bank through tonnes of broken glass and out through a village where some very nasty dogs with very sharp teeth began to attack, but Brainiac soon calmed them down as he politely mentioned that he would do to them what he does to sheep back home. At this point we never even noticed that Gunpowder Plod had disappeared as we headed towards Pok Oi Hospital and the long run back home.

Back at the buckets after 2 hours, Golden Balls was observed looking very worried and sticky as One Eyed Jack had thrown Coke over him… please can someone tell One Eyed Jack not to throw Coke around, he’s supposed to snort it. Fartypants was looking clean and fresh and equally G-Spot and LSG were looking well pleased with themselves as they were able to work out how to get back without getting shitty. Golden Jelly had to turn back with Malu as her batteries had run out… but I think she was pre-warned by little Golden Balls not to follow us. Seeing and smelling the state of us, Golden Jelly managed to negotiate with a store owner for a quick wash down with his hose. After a few softies we just about had enough energy left for a circle before heading out to the daipaidong in Kam Tin right before closing time. Once again this was another excellent evening with the N2TH3 pre-school and I am sure we will be talking about this run for a very long while. – Mango Groove