ONCE MORE, AND ONLY ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
AGM @ the SCANDINAVIAN HOUSE Grattan Place, Frenchs Forest
Google Earth : Run 2307
The telephone rang just after midnight, it had to be something serious. I wasn’t wrong, it was Kyber. He obviously had a lot on his mind and couldn’t sleep, and naturally wanted to share his insomnia with someone, anyone. So he had chosen Me.
“Oh Major, wonder whether you could drop around to my place tomorrow,( it was actually now today) would like to discuss something with you, something that needs your special talents,” he said. He had a pleading note of desperation in his voice, as if he had already received several knock-backs from others that evening who also had special talents.
I thought to myself, for fuck sake, not again, some bastard has dobbed me in for the Hash Circular ! Probably No Good Boyo !
Much later that morning I turned up at Kyber’s place in Castlecrag. Not getting any responses from my kicking at the boarded-up front door, I wandered down the side of the house. I then paused, and glanced through one of the cracked window panes in a back room, there was Kyber furiously feeding sheets of paper into a shredder. He looked up with a guilty start when I banged on the window, and came quickly to the door after he had thrown a dirty tea towel over the shredder.
“Ah, Major” he said, laughing nervously, “good of you to come, I’ll get something for us to drink from the wine cellar, and then we can have a chat.”
Wine Cellar ! Well how about that. I shouldn’t have been impressed. It was only much later I learnt that the dilapidated brick shed he disappeared into was an old septic tank. He took sometime to reappear so I quickly had a look at what he had been shredding. They appeared to be Hash Files. The top one labeled “Goonshow” had the title vigoriously crossed out and “Short Fuse” written in its place.
At the time I was unable to look at any other documents because I could hear Kyber making his way back. He reappeared brandishing a very old looking bottle of something from which the label was missing, probably rotted away by the chemicals from the septic tank. A fact I fortunately was unaware of at the time.
So although Kyber had to push the crumbling cork into the bottle, the contents were surprising good. After he felt he had sufficiently prime and prepared me, sure enough it was the Hash Circular that I yet again was being asked to compiled. I had been specially chosen, according to Kyber, by the unspecified new President. He was probably phoned up around midnight also, and was now on his way. Sure enough, as we drained the remainder of the bottle of unknown whatever, there came a thunderous banging at the boarded-up front door. A din that only an impatient and cantankerous individual could make.
“That’s Him,” said Kyber, “make your way out through the side door, and I’ll take “Him” around the back,” and with no more to do, quickly disappeared.
It was the moment I had been waiting for. There was no way Kyber would know which files he had shredded, so I grabbed a handful including the “Short Fuse” dossier, and left.
What a find !
In the coming weeks, ALL will be revealed.
A SHORT COMMENT ON THE AGM AND THE NEW COMMITTEE
So moving right along we come to the AGM and the New Committee, not that we really want to.
Unable to duplicate that memorable evening of the Dutch Choir all those years ago, Kyber settled for a string quartet which has to be cut back to two, when Julia Blow-Hard and her minders proved true to form and blew out the entertainment budget.
Much later, we were introduced to the new Committee headed up by Last Chance Louie. We were then introduced to his aged collection of old farts, most of whom were suffering from the strain of thirty to forty years of bad BBQs and hard campaigning in the Hash. The poor bastards must have staggered out from the local blood bank to make it onto the stage.
We can only hope that Pee Dub will be able to supply some fresh material for the new ?! Hash Sec. Major Disaster, who at 79 or is it 89 ?, has been dusted off and dragged out once more to write the Circular for the inane and the feeble minded..
The job clearly has its draw backs, as the previous incumbent, poor old Milton was recently carted off to hospital with chest pains. Kyber later privately announced that a Voodoo doll complete with impaling pins had been found in the car park, and a local priest had been called in to investigate. Questions are being asked and names are being named.
It will obviously be left to the young bloods, Plunger and Lost Patrol to get us safely through the year.
NEXT WEEK’S RUN 2308 19th of September
Car Park at the Rear of the Brookvale Hotel, Crn Roger/Old Pittwater Road
Yet Again ! Torches are required.
OnOn Road Kill fare at the Brookvale Hotel.
AND, ON SPREADING FEAR AND APPREHENSION. PART ONE.
Just as I was about to send this off to all and sundry, a plain, brown envelope was slipped under the front door. I ran quickly to the door but the deliverer had disappeared into the undergrowth as silently as he had come.
Inside the envelope was a solitary page, blank except for the heading, “Heard on the Grapevine”, followed by a single line “to be continued in the next installment”.
How bloody mysterious !
