Well we have been back on Lamma Island for over a week now and it’s great to have escaped from dreary England where people seemed mostly obsessed with the hosepipe ban and a possible petrol shortage. Even when there isn’t a crisis, the English have to invent one.
Only in England, which enjoys (or doesn’t, more to the point) one of the wettest and most drizzly climates in the world can there be a drought declared in April. And everyone meekly accepts the feeble explanation that this is necessary because only a mere 82% of the usual amounts of rain fell over the last two winters. By the way those were the same winters when drivers were warned to stay at home due to unusual amounts of snowfall and there were so many flash floods it was widely blamed on dramatic climate change. Last summer was so wet that, if I remember correctly, people complained in the press about the misery of rain soaked summer staycations in the UK.
No chance of a hosepipe ban here on Lamma Island as the rain is belting down outside my window overlooking the beach at Hung Shing Ye. There have been unseasonably intense thunderstorms for three days now and the sky becomes this thick, light grey smog pierced by flashes of fork lightening followed by huge violent cracks of thunder. I love a good thunderstorm but some of those huge explosions have you leaping out of your chair.
I had an unusual encounter this morning as I was running along by favourite route before the rains started. A narrow red dirt path winds its way between the vegetation, just below the ridgeline of the mountains above Hung Shing Ye. Conscious of the recent rain making the going a little slippery I was watching my step quite carefully when on negotiating a short and steep rocky incline I was confronted by the most terrifying creature.
Even though we were at least 80 meters above sea level, it looked like an angry rust brown crab about 10 cm in diameter with two huge pincers already opened and held aloft above its armoured body, ready to strike. I stopped abruptly in my tracks, panting and sweating, then tried to stare him down while I considered my options. I also thought it important to make a rough calculation of whether this vicious looking crab, lobster, scorpion, invertebrate, monster thingy, was capable of leaping distances of over 20 times its body length, to attack its prey.
Neither of us seemed prepared to retreat in this tense stand-off between man in Lycra running shorts and monster thingy in the mountain passes of Lamma Island. In the end, I took a deep breath and rather carefully took an exaggerated giant stride over him, while keeping a cautionary hand in a protective position over my genitals. Then I and ran off down the path shouting some suitable insults over my shoulder in a pathetic sort of way.
I don’t think there can be much doubt that the mountain monster realised he had met a worthy adversary that morning.
It was a bit disappointing frankly, having consulted Google, to discover that the monster was probably no more than an Asian Land Crab. I was lucky that it was not as Giant Coconut Crab as these can grow to three meters in diameter and can crush coconuts with their powerful pincers.
I knew there were snakes and scorpions in those mountains but imagine running into a giant limb crushing crab?
That’s what I would call a real crisis.
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