Egg & Bacon Pie achieves 700 runs with Lakeside H3
November 2018
Although E&B has hashed in Jakarta, London and Singapore, the greater part of her hashing life has been at Lakeside Hash House Harriers.
The thing about E&B is that she doesn’t drink – she never touches the stuff. Plus, she’s a bit of a show-off. If there’s a song to be sung or a dance to prance, there she is front and centre, entertaining all of us. So it’s odd that she was so attracted to the drinking club with a running problem.
E&B never drinks.
Her show offy tendencies are probably genetic. E&B’s great great uncle, a Richmond resident, was Jantz Kohlman. In the 1880s and 1890s he was a renowned multi-instrumentalist, singer, actor and comedian who performed with the ‘Melbourne’s People’s Concerts’. His favourite instruments were the mouth organ, ocarina, concertina and imitation bagpipes.
Ocarina and imitation bagpipes.
The People’s concerts were performed at The Temperance Hall which was built by the Total Abstinence Society in Russell Street in the 1870s. Society members had to pledge that they would never use any intoxicating liquors as a beverage. So here we can see gg-uncle Jantz’s influence and the germination of some important strands of E&B’s personality – her tee totaling dancing, singing, and bagpipe playing. Joining Lakeside Hash gave E&B the opportunity to expound on the evils of drink while entertaining us with her bag piping skills as we celebrate St Andrews Day each November.
E&B reprises GG Uncle Jantz
Come each St Andrews day, E&B sets a lovely run along the riverside at Collingwood and Abbotsford, a run hugely enlivened by E&B hiding in the bushes then popping out unexpectedly playing the bagpipes at oncoming hashers. Then it’s back to Richmond for a rowdy circle and a splendid dinner of roast beef and haggis, the latter being piped in and accompanied by that stuff you’re not supposed to drink. Here’s E&B’s advice on haggis preparation.
A Live haggis and a scary face.
First you have to catch and kill your Haggis. Start by issuing an invitation:
“Dear Mr Haggis, Lakeside hash would love to have you for dinner at our upcoming St Andrews Day run. No need to bring anything, just bring yourself, although we wouldn’t say no to a bottle of Johnny Walker as we’ll need it to marinate the protein.”
When the Haggis rocks up, you can move to the kill phase. The Haggis is a sensitive, socially awkward creature so just make a couple of really scary faces and the poor terrified little thing should promptly turn up its toes.
A deceased haggis and a processed haggis ready to eat. Yum, don’t they both look delicious.
One St Andrews Day celebration ended tragically.
Bag pipe playing can cause death.
Immediately after this photo – the tent, the large cardboard box and bike wheels balancing precariously above E&B’s head, crashed to earth. Fortunately E&B escaped unharmed but distressingly the bagpipes took the full brunt of the crash. Recognising the urgency of the situation, a sub-committee was formed to cogitate on which of the octopus-like bagpipe protuberances was actually an airway so that CPR could be administered, while a working party considered who could best deliver the life saving treatment. Lotsa Fun and Codpiece were deemed ineligible because they never stop to draw breath. The very sensible Gargoyle got to work on the breathing while Pointy delivered bag compressions to the rhythm of the Bee Gees 1977 disco hit “Stayin’ Alive”, effective albeit insensitive. The pipes emitted melodic little last gasps prompting elderly Lakesiders to bop along with the Bee Gees.
Gargoyle and Pointy worked desperately for 10 seconds, but finding no pulse, pronounced the bagpipes dead.
Lotsa Fun attempts to neutralise the pipes.
The following year E&B arrived with a new set of bagpipes. We were so pleased. Lakesiders got together, put a contract out and gave Lotsa Fun the job of neutralising the pipes. We figured as E&B is so tall and Lotsa Fun is so small she could sneak up unobserved and take them out. But Lotsa is a kind person who lacks the killer instinct, so the pipes survived. Mmmm. Maybe Lotsa was too small and we needed someone extra tall, like Cooch.
Cooch cuts off a bagpipe airway.
Coochy thought strangulation would do the trick but of course, bagpipes have four, possibly five airways so cutting off only one bagpipe airway at a time gives the buggar time to recuperate. Hence the pipes lived to annoy us for years to come.
Standing too close to bagpipes causes deafness.