The Vietnamese Cop with Excellent Choices
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Love it or loathe it, but “The Bill” TV series gave the hapless and generally misguided devotees a small insight into the typical operations of a British Cop station. But did you know that the POSH has its very own cop within our midst?
Well of course we have! Anyone who is the slightest bit worldly will instantly know the meaning of “The Bill”, ……..namely Cops, Fuzz, Bobbies, Boys in Blue, The Law, The Force, Gendarme and so many more
And you will also know that our Bill hails all the way from Vietnam. This week he is “our man of the moment”. A man of Oriental and Classic French Colonial influence. And like any Bill with a French orientation back to the 1960’s and early 1970’s he is commensurately of the same ilk and mould as the true French gentleman Cop ‘Maigret’.
Add to this Our Bill is an aficionado of vintage cars. In his dashing days he would purr around the streets of Hanoi in his highly stylish Citroen Traction Avant Normale, 11B circa 1952. This classic car was also his classy chick puller from this French colonial era. Always with his roving eye and sense of style he would ensure that the fresh young maidens of this fair city were kept safe and out of harm’s way.
Thus we have a celebrity member of the Vietnamese Bill and POSH hash hosting a night out on the beach front
And like so many other TV cop shows we are exposed to these days, our Vietnamese sleuthing cop hero had his side-kick, but he was certainly of no green-horn caliber. He was dependable and solid as a rock.
Our Bill made some excellent choices by making his own choice, or as it turned out to be Your Choice for the night to keep the Dee Why streets safe and clear of any riff raff.
And thus at the appointed hour we set out for the seaside and the beach, but wait…..this was the middle of winter and in the pitch dark of night. So surely this was no time for the sunhat, bucket and spade etc; so why were we there? Well obviously for the same reason as that legendary oxymoron rhyme: –
One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead men got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other,
One was blind and the other couldn’t see
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
A blind man went to see fair play,
A dumb man went to shout “hooray”……….
Now Our Hanoi Bill is a traditional cop, preferring success at every turn, and to borrow a tried and tested advertising motto,….. “why change a winning formula?” And so it was, along the promenade beside the beach, up and over the clifftop on a goat trail with you-beaut views of the northern beaches… all in the pitch dark…just the same as we have enjoyed 2 or 3 times before in past years. But who cared?…NO ONE! …It was all good, and even those few hashmen whose memory knew where the night’s trail went, cared little as it was nearly all through green reserves, bush links and alleyways, well
away from the hurly-burly of traffic and seething urbanity of Dee Why. In fact all the qualities of a winning winter run.
It’s always a pleasure to instantly recognise a hashman from far off, just by the gait of their run and the shape of their shadowy outline. Take Goon Show fr’instance. A tallish, gangly bloke on the move, with a lolloping, shuffling style not unlike Cliffy Young on his inaugural jog to Melbourne. And on Monday night GS’s fluoro vest flapped in the breeze like a maxi yacht in irons. It was a delight to watch him whilst Spud kept to the competently marked trail like glue (which had survived remarkably well from the light shower preceding the run).
But back at the bucket the hot talk was all about the home cooked dinner in the exclusive beach front restaurant —- up stairs in the Dee Why Surf Club.
Every now and then hares step up to the mark and set standards which outshine all the rest…well almost all the rest…Pilko aside. Not only but also. Our Dual Heroes not only set a run of high quality and enjoyment BUT ALSO established their own 5X restaurant for the night…inviting select hash guests only. From a small kitchen the size of Simmo’s spare downstairs dunny, The Bill and his Excellent Choice co-hare now turned chefs cut, chopped, diced, boiled, brewed, spiced, stirred and simmered for the whole of Monday to become Master chefs in their own right, to feed 48 or so gannet like hashmen.
The menu was Hobson’s Choice but that mattered little as the quality and quantity excelled, starting bang on time with French Colonial Onion soup with cruets and French Colonial baguettes, before moving south to Italy, and Bologna in particular, with their famed Bolognaise sauce, avec pasta en masse; also served on time and in voluminous quantities all topped with finely grated cheese hailing from Parma.
And just as the hash boys started looking like the French pneumatic Michelin Man, out came the cheese platas and biscuits, all pre-diced for the dainty and mortal. Mortal they may have become had any more food appeared but it was more than enough. Credit must also go to Molly Meldrum who for purely humanitarian hash reasons of his own, mucked into the kitchen and became a kitchen skivvy superb and also helped make the meal as famed as it will become for this year and well beyond.
The numbers for the night were swelled by the reappearance of two long lost hashmen…..Nureyev and Turban Top. Watch out Tic-Toc ..we also have another TT in the hash. This re-emerging TT has been out of circulation for many years but is welcomed back to the fold. Nureyev clearly returned for the meal and also to remind the rest of our gasping, foot shuffling, slack pack, what real running is all about. The other TT also brought a mate, Ken, who expressed his thanks for a top night above and beyond any of his expectations. And that just about sums up what The Vietnamese Bill with his Excellent Choices put on for the night.
Your Hash Journo