(Courtesy Brown Finger)
The morning of the Songkran run was hot. By the time we started to gather at the Imperial’s beer
garden for the early start, it was as hot as sitting under a rocket at Cape Canaveral with the engines
fired and the countdown expired. The force of the sun at its zenith was relentless; the garden
seemed to trap the heat and the sun seemed to fire up the still air until it burned with the ferocity of
a cremation oven. I was already as thirsty as a camel with no humps and sweating like a pig tucked
up beneath a rather heavy duvet, and I hadn’t even started to run. Could we possibly survive such
viciously hostile conditions?
But wait, beer was already on tap, courtesy of Redundant Seaman, and there was ice, and laughter,
and a lot of new faces and some old ones, too. The day was going to be extremely hot, sure, but it
was also going to be refreshingly wet with copious amounts of beer to refresh the internals and even
larger quantities of water to refresh the externals once we got amongst the festive activities; it was
going to be fun.
Cool Balls had prepared some cute little signs for the trail, lots of little arrows with little red HHHs
on, and little white circles with little green Cs on to denote circle checks, and little strips of sticky
orange paper for us to follow. Wow, a lot of work must have gone into producing such a pretty little
trail, but would we be able to find it . . .?
Things didn’t start well at all. One of the three hares pointed the way of the trail by drawing a circle
in the air. WTF . . .? We all stood around looking stunned and bemused until someone with far more
brains than I decided the best thing to do was to head out of the hotel exit – clever, eh? And sure
enough we found one of the cute little signs. The pack was off brandishing mean looking water
weapons of mass destruction, squirting their massive pistols at all and sundry. Even the scrawny
street dogs were treated to a thorough soaking.
So the trail wound its merry way through the narrow streets of the city, heading towards the river,
then over the iron bridge, and finally down a very-hard-to-find dirt trail on the riverbank, which lead
us to the fist and very welcome internal refreshment stop. Tequila and beer was quickly downed
and mixed potently with the pre-start alcohol, and early splashes were given out by a more than
usually relaxed Manic Monkey GM coming to the end of his tenure. And there were visiting hashers
from Borneo who were having a smashed-whale of a time, dedicating themselves to making sure
that everyone else was having one too. And we were!
Then we were suddenly off again, heading back over the river, through more narrow streets until we
began to find the splashers, not the hash splashers but the Thai splashers who were lined up bow
to stern along the streets with buckets of icy water and . . . well you already know the rest! And we
hit the next internal refreshment establishment, the Riva, on the Moat; more beer, and chicken and
chips . . . if only they had been in the same basket with a couple of slices of dried out tomato and a
piece of limp lettuce – the quintessential British pub grub of the seventies. Oh my god how I miss a
good chicken in the basket with a pint of warm brown and mild . . . urghhhhh!
And we were off again. I couldn’t find trail amid the chaos of the festivities around the Moat.
Thankfully Spunky Monkey was on hand to whisper the location of the next internal refreshment
stop – Tiger Kingdom. Thank god I knew where it was, so I hooked up with Fishy Fingers and ran
off-trail straight there. The landlord had only expected around 10 hashers and was completely
unprepared for the hordes that eventually arrived. But he made do and hurriedly set out some
tables next to the road. The beer arrived to refresh the internals and the water arrived from the
close proximity of the pickups and their barrels of iced water! But what the hell did I care, by now
the beer had working my mind up into a splendid state of insensitive insobriety.
And so it came to pass that we eventually headed back to the Imperial, and the circle started around
17.00 or so, far later than Monkey Spanker had said it would start – “no later than 16.00 start”, I
recall him yelling as we headed out on the run. We were still drinking draft beer. And then the Hash
Cash had a whip round to pay for another barrel of beer. We were downing the amber nectar like
brainless Australians – and there were a few of those present, too.
The circle was hilarious – or at least I think it was. By now I had surpassed all the Australians put
together in the brainless stakes. Nevertheless, Horny Holeblaster couldn’t stop the naked asses
hitting the ice, and I don’t remember him caring all that much. I certainly recall a fairy-white bony
ass belonging to Graven Image and a slab of visiting Danish bacon, and then there was the visitor
from Borneo, slipping and sliding, slipping and . . . A family hash, I ask you! And then Geisha Gash
was given a visitor’s T-shirt, but only if she changed into it in the circle . . . A family hash, well I never
did! And such naked fun and frolics in the beer garden of an entirely respectable hotel – goodness,
gracious me, whatever next!
The last thing I remember was Hairy Asshole leading the chant “One more year, one more year . . .”
and then there was this kind of blissful void. Great stuff the hares and the GM and everyone else.
One more year . . . one more year . . . zzzzz . . . zzzzzzz.