The Medieval Wizard & The Alchemist
Was it amnesia or just another senior’s moment that brought you this run by the two Trail Master who may also to be referred to as TM2
The truth be known (and in confidence, so please don’t let this go past your eyes …OK?) …but methinks that when I asked our august TM at Trafalgar Square where next week’s run would be (as the nominated hares had postponed their much awaited run), there was a pregnant pause and stunned silence. Not 24 hours later all was revealed and you all enjoyed what might be termed as a Politically Correct winter run, but more on that in a moment
It was a wild (Ooops!) mild and stormy balmy night, with omens of auspiciousness, not least that both TM’s had colluded to provide us with the very safest of runs this year. Run setting and TM’ing all within the space of 3 hours would surely guarantee that we would never, ever get lost. Or would it? Or perhaps we shouldn’t ask.
Anyway, the run can be “divided into three halves” as my geography master at school would say, so please don’t blame me on the dodgy maths of this statement.
1.0 First up was the road run which was dogged by a series of check backs, which were akin to the Liberal (read Conservative) party. In fact, there were more checks, dead ends and “U” turns, and inexplicable directional arrows than Tony Abbot’s policies for the next election. The front runners fell for all of them one after the other (as will most of the population seeking a light at the end of the tunnel), as TM Salty quietly watched them tie themselves in running knots. But it kept the pack together a treat, and we worked our way slowly towards River Road and the promise of Gore Creek Reserve.
2.0 Once there the Labour Party took over. Initially it felt good to be away from all that vehicular traffic with the soft soil under our swift athletic feet, but naturally enough we had to provide our own electricity and light. What else you expect? The twinkling head torches strung out like glow worms in the dark…..the front intelligent runners being well ahead, crossed the creek, but not so the body of the pack, who in the bosom of the TM, eventually worked out that we woz orff trail. But TM Salty assured us that all was well and laid out more dunny paper than we could collectively use in a fit of dysentery. Only trouble was that in the dark his map was as much use as the dunny paper. So more than slightly lost (just like the Labour Party) we had to back track to find the real route through the dark and dingy forest. And cleverly we emerged back into civilisation right by Jungle Jim’s and Centrepoint’s local watering hole…the Longueville Bowlo Club.
Now what do you think is at the junction of Longeuville Road and the Bowlo Club? None other than Porters Bottleshop. Captain Haddock, affectionately called Commodore Nick seeing his seeing his Golden opportunity of having a ‘swift resuscitation’ half way around the trail, ducked in via the side door to fill himself with a “quick snifter”
Captain Haddock (AKA Commodore Nick) ducked in to ‘Porters’ to fill himself with a “quick whisky snifter”
3.0 And thus fortified he and the pack resumed their merry way down towards Lane Cove Country Club, or more accurately the golf course, and a romp across the fairways and Greens (Party).
Luckily the boat people hadn’t reached Sydney Harbour, nor had they been re-settled in tents (by Christine Milne or Sarah Hanson-Young) on this vestige of pristine green open space. TM Salty quickly moved the pack and uphill and northwards fearing that the Greens would take pity on this motley and lost group of vagabonds. And so they came straggling and shuffling back to the car park to find his cohort, the Medieval Wizard, commonly referred to as The Druid, concocting a nectar of youth sustaining liquid in the stainless steel cauldron. And so the evening of politically correct games and runs had been dispensed.
Leaning back on one of the cars in his spinnaker sized fluoro vest Goon Show declared the run as a “Master class winter run”, where the pack was kept together and the territory varied and interesting. It was followed by a meal of the same status.
So what of our hares?
Most might foolishly think of people like Druid as being some kind of medieval religious, sun worshiping Welsh Celt, or wizard with fancy platted icons and symbols around his head, with a penchant of arranging large stone blocks of granite in circles to watch the summer solstice rise. But wrong!
The Druids of today, and of course of our wizard styled hare, who was raised in the swinging 60’s emerged out of an act of rebellion during this fecund and tumultuous period. Virtually simultaneously, on both sides of the Atlantic, revolutions occurred in how Druidry was understood. In 1963 on the Carleton College campus in the USA a group called The Reformed Druids of North America was created as a protest against mandatory Sunday morning chapel attendance, whilst in England they rebelled against the election of a new Druid Chief, and established their own group, The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids.
Macca’s ‘Body Bond’, has become his vehicle for conveying many of the ideas as expressed by groups such as The Theosophical Society and The Order of the Golden Dawn. Our man is therefore a swinging open minded Druid of contemporary cult. Therefore respect the man for his cultural love orientation as this an offer much to the hash….
As for that Salty Peter well we all know that this is the incarnate of pure Alchemy.
The substance which sent the early European settlers on their murdering way against those innocent and noble savages in Darkest Africa and Australia in the form of Gun Powder
Indeed as most of you war buffs know.that in early the 19th in century, Salt Peter was a primary ingredient in gun powder (75% salt peter (potassium nitrate), 10% sulfur and 15% charcoal). Most Salt Peter came from mining or harvesting operations in caves from bat guano. Salt Peter or “nitre” was also collected from animal and human wastes. Human excremental wastes were collected from public outhouses and from effluent individuals.
But NOT by our boy!
Think of him as a thoroughly modern day man, always with an eye for a wonderful opportunity…including music, bands, dancing, and entertaining young ladies and we all know what that might be……..Right?
Hash Your Journo