Peasants’ Revolt Revisited

Hare Big Moany was full of his impending pedal cart marathon and the probability he would shortly be retrenched. “Does Bukkake live anywhere near Alton, the boring Hampshire village I’ll be taking early retirement to?” he asked in a surprisingly upbeat manner. “Does he shoot rabbits? Can I borrow his air rifle?” Then he set us off on his self-confessed “crap” run: some checks, one check back, and “there’s something unpleasant in the shiggy”.

So off we all capered the 100m down Kam Ho Road and across the railway bridge where the run always goes, except for Creme Brulee, who, not suffering the contempt of familiarity (eh?), carried on down Kam Ho Road. Well, he was wrong, as was everybody else. After a good 5 minutes Liberace – amazingly – called trail through the yards and shacks towards Ho Pui village, site of a recent peasants’ revolt against the NNT. Aaaghhh!

As I ran towards Nemesis Village, I felt a stone in my shoe insistently annoying the sole of my right foot. Little did I know this was to be the end of my trail. Trail? Yes, it went through the village without incurring any sort of wrath, and then up through some nice shiggy to the catchwater road. Here trail led right along the road until the staircase that leads to the mountain marathon course, then left to the reservoir and down the road towards Ho Pui before a sneaky right onto a nice dirt path home, around 6km total. The likes of Mango Groove, Liberace, Creme Brulee and Penile Dementia managed this simple, uncomplicated and perfectly pleasant trail, perfect for a Wednesday night, while One Eyed Jack and Geriatric did their own creative shortcuts and Eunuch came late to do the trail backwards. Golden Jelly and Back To The Future took their time and almost triggered a revolt of their own as GM Serbian Bomber kept delaying the circle until they returned.

Creme Brulee produced “French jaffa cakes”, or florentins, claiming to be Florent himself, but the astute among us couldn’t help noticing he’d found them on the HLY bargain trolley, $58 discounted to $20. They were rather fine so I went in the next day and cleared out the discounted stock.

And what of me? Who cares. But after trying to empty the “stone” from my shoe three times I found a nail in my shoe that took 20 minutes to remove. So I short-cut blatantly and found two interesting things: first, a many-banded krait on the catchwater road, a snake that will kill you; and then a brazen gate across the catchwater road where it passes the village, thrown up by villagers and their new village house development, preventing traffic on the Shek Kong-Tai Lam route from passing. I checked, and there was another gate on the other side of the development, which you could reach only by zig-zagging through the village. It’s clearly illegal.

And maybe that’s why the peasants revolted against us a couple of months ago, we busybody outsiders, when presumably they were constructing it all?

Let’s not forget the hare. We saw Big Moany three days later. “I was fired the very next day,” he beamed. “Then I went to the pedal cart 24-hour marathon, where I started for my (ex)-company, and blew away all the fit young cyclist / trail runner types who comprised the opposition. This fat, cigar-smoking, alcoholic old fart is now a god among men!”

Hear, hear! – Golden Balls

Hare: Big Moany

Runners: Liberace, Penile Dementia, Creme Brulee, Mango Groove, One Eyed Jack, Eunuch, Golden Jelly, Back To The Future, Geriatric, Golden Balls, Serbian Bomber