The Pub Crawl

Hares: Mainly Stingray but assisted by anyone capable of staggering a few steps to the next watering hole

Pack: Honorable GM QT and Bunter, Catch of the Day, Crème Brulee, Eunuch, Geriatric, Golden Balls, Honey Monster, Liberace, Luk Sap Gao, Mango Groove, Prince of Darkness, Vibrator, Victim   

Report: An exciting run, so filled with excitement that I’ve forgotten most of it.   There was some superb hare-ing, especially by LSG who took the startled (and surprisingly ungainly) hashers scrambling over a fairly high wall. I wonder how the locals navigate it – oh, perhaps they go around.   Thanks to LSG, I received my first hash injury on a pub run! 

Liberace managed to set a pub run that was distinctively his;  clear arrows for 20 yards followed by no arrows, all the runners looking around puzzled until “it’s over here” was shouted from 100 hundred yards away in the opposite direction.  Good thing there were a lot of us.  We would have been wandering the streets for hours seeking the next pub.

The operators of said pub might have been happy if we’d failed to visit them, since many pubs were treated to what might kindly be termed ‘out of tune’ Christmas caroling – a holiday event that, to the bar’s regular customers, mercifully comes but once a year.   

But a few minutes per pub and we were off again, hot on another trail.   Mango Groove masterfully manned the cash reserves; when one barkeep told me it would cost hundreds for a few beers, Mango laughed him to scorn and negotiated a damn reasonable price for those slightly post-expiration-date Knight brews.    

Stingray made the evening complete with a fantastic T-shirt, indicating the Tai Po bars on an MTR-style map; I will treasure the shirt when I am old and gray (wait a minute . . .) and not only for the memory.  I will only have to point to any bar on the shirt, drooling emphatically, and the nice gendarmes will take me there.  Speaking of gendarmes, we did not visit the Bobby London on our tour —  perhaps a first?  I guess gendarmerie is not the thing these days. 

But camaraderie was there in plenty; amen for Catch of the Day or it would have been an all-male (lesser) hash.   But all went smoothly; many pubs were visited; smiles were shared; cups held high; down-downs delivered (?).  There was pizza, expertly organized by NNTGM QT, the presence of Honey Monster (international (Scots?) man of mystery), the terrifying pool contest between Liberace and Catch of the Day (would he rip the cloth?), and extended cordial goodbyes as members of the pack departed in turn, awaiting the next crawl.

Scribe: Victim

At Last…the AGM!

After much dithering and changing of plans, the AGM finally came round almost a month after it was first scheduled — and what a good one it was. A well attended, fine run set by outgoing GM2 Penile Dementia with some last-minute assistance from Liberace, followed by a brief bucket session on the podium and a great on on at the adjacent hawker centre with the circle and election results taking place before the meal.

The run started from the roof podium of the Tai Po wet market cum hawker centre and trail initially went into the mazy Tai Po Market backstreets with plenty of checks and feints to keep the pack together, eventually establishing itself along the river and then up through the squatter huts into the shiggy. Fiendish check-backs kept the pack together uphill through the forest, with the most fiendish of all at the top of the hill. Then it was down, along a drainage culvert, down some steep waterworks steps, briefly along the highway then into shiggy again before trail emerged through more squatter stuff, down towards the railway and home. Well set trail with nobody lost and out for ages, all back in good time for the tables booked in the hawker centre.

Outgoing GM Catch Of The Day presided over a hilarious circle, and the new committee was elected appointed with the aid of an animated laptop presentation: young QT is our new GM, while a special new post of cleaner was created, to be known as Broom (“I’ve already had two beers, I’m ready for the broom…”). Roll your mouse over the grid below to see who’s who for the coming twelvemonth.

Then it was dinner (the usual gwailo garbage plus some very fresh seafood purchased from the wet market below) and old-style boozing until the hawkers started hosing the floors down. Drunk, we took the hint. On on to another year of the Northern New Territories Hash House Harriers!

Hares Penile Dementia, Liberace

Present Golden Jelly, Prince Of Darkness, Geriatric, QT, Mango Groove, Golden Balls, Bunter, Radio 1, Back To The Future, Creme Brulee, Eunuch, Stingray, Catch Of The Day, Walkie Talkie, Fartypants (incomplete)

GM QT

RA Creme Brulee

CASH Radio 1

GM2 Serbian Bomber

RA2 Catch Of The Day

HARE RAISER Back To The Future

BOOZE Stingray

THE CLEANER Mango Groove

WEBSHITE Gunpowder Plod