A storyteller's Super Rugby semi-finals preview

A hurricane, a Scottish warrior from the Highlands, and a lion walked into a bar. The bartender, named McKenzie, asked: “What’ll it be?”

The hurricane rotated rapidly, clockwise. As the hurricane circulated, the barstools became arranged in a spiral pattern, and all the beer evaporated and then re-condensed into a beer cloud.

McKenzie smiled. His smile was odd. It did not seem to match the moment. As the hurricane continued to destroy his bar, McKenzie stayed calm, and appeared joyful.

He leapt over the bar, skipped, ducked, and spun cyclonically into the eye of the storm, just as the water sprinklers started from the ceiling.

And he smiled again, as he realised, as did the kilted Highlander and the big lion, that wind speeds within the troposphere were negligible.

The intense hurricane was not happy. He grew larger. After about 60 minutes of whipping around and around and around, at 165 knots, releasing a prodigious amount of heat energy, that made all of the bar patrons’ hair stand up very high and during which time the hurricane made a sound like “bbbbbbbbbbbb,” the energetics of the storm knocked little McKenzie over and he smiled no more.

The lion, named Leo de Leeu, sniffed at the prostrate little bartender and decided there wasn’t enough meat to bother. He yawned, as lions often do, and the sound of his yawn was like this: “Halaholoooooooooo.”

The 230 kg Leo had not traveled far to the bar. It was just around the corner from his home in Jo’burg. He was endangered, but not worried. His face was scarred and marked with the relics of wounds suffered in many a derby, played for pride.

It was late, so he was waking up, and as he listed to the hurricane brag about his wind-speed, he licked his giant paws. His mane was healthy, but he had not yet eaten his quota, so he was grumpy.

Angus, the Highlander, was always grumpy. It was his state of being. But the victorious hurricane was buying so they sat down and listened to Hurricane Perenara explain his bar trick to his new mates.

McKenzie rose to his feet, with a sheepish smile, and asked for orders.

“Single malt from the Isle of Skye,” ordered the Highlander, who watched McKenzie pour very carefully, and demanded he fill it to the very top.

“Fuzzy navel,” growled the lion.

As he sipped his whiskey, the Highlander interrogated the hurricane: “Why are you called a hurricane? Why not a cyclone? That’s what ye are.”

“One of my best mates, Victor Vito, and my other best mate Ricardo Riccitelli, are Spanish by origin, and they told me about the Spanish word huracán, derived from the Mayan god Hurucan. So I decided to go with that.”

“Why do you dress in yellow?” roared Leo.

The lion was not really interested. He was just talking because it’s fun to talk when you are lion in a bar.

But the hurricane was happy to explain: “B-b-b-b-b-b-but let me first explain why fire engines are red. A fire truck has four tyes and eight hoses. Four plus eight is twelve. Twelve inches is a foot. A foot is how long a ruler is in school. A ruler was Queen Elizabeth. The Queen Elizabeth was one of the greatest ships to sail the sea. In the sea there are fishes. Fish have fins. The Finns are next to the Russians. And Russians are red.”

The lion and the Highlander looked at each other with disbelief, but the hurricane was swirling around again, making sounds.

The lion scavenged from the hurricane’s plate, and drank his fuzzy navel. He did not have good stamina, whereas the hurricane seemed to never stop talking, moving, and finding space to turn circles in.

“What about you, Leo?” asked the Highlands Scot. “Would you like to wrestle after you finish your wee girly drink?”

Angus challenged the lion knowing the beast was not a man-eater. In fact, Leo had eaten a wildebeest, a zebra, an angry warthog, and a kudu before coming to the pub.

“Sure, mate,” roared Leo. He flexed and stretched and krieled and combrincked and mapoed and faffed a little.

The hurricane slowed down. “This, I have to see.”

Angus was the son of the son of the son of the son of son of a Celt who settled near Ben Nevis, in the Gaidhealtachd region. His clan spoke Gaelic with a Kiwi twist. When he said “plenty,” it sounded like “plinty.”

He threw back his head with its tasseled cap as he drained the last of his single malt, and without warning, plunged his broadsword deep into the lion.

The bartender and the hurricane knew this was a professional foul, but because they would have done the same thing when fighting a lion, they shrugged.

Leo roared a terrible primeval roar. It sounded a bit like “Rooooo-hannnnnn!” And he converted the Scot into puddle of haggis. He stood triumphant over his bar fight victim and said to the hurricane: “And then there were two.”