THE THURSDAY CLUB

The first meetings were held in a pungent dark space between the toilet and a duck pen to comfort quarantined souls with blackmarket liquor in the days of the MECQ, and Jan de Liche and the thieves of the woods were the first guests, joining from Aalst to plot his death and Marieke's revenge on Baru.

After them came Robert Redford from the west when the meetings were moved to the veranda under the cover of drying towels, the resistance of Jesse James, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull narrated over bottles of extra strong beer while Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp hatch their revenge.

MGCQ lifted the secrecy and enabled meetings in other places which attracted Piotr and Witold from the mire of a small Polish town, the gardeners of Alice Springs who emerged through a pine gap, and representatives of the American Broadcasting Company and People Magazine that tried to sell the castles of Edinburgh and Cardiff with the story of Diana.

It was then that Zambrano and Combate of the 4th Company shared how Palafox died from drinking too much tequila after their Friday football games in Mexico so right there, the Phantom Bikers agreed to move their meetings to Thursday nights. 

They've had enough of chasing hangover cures which took them to as far as Lanzhou for the magic of its stir fried lilies, firecracker beef noodles and Gaodan niangpi before side stepping to Jiayuguan to pick up pre-ordered grilled lamb and then to Linxia for some fat wrapped liver that will be paired with Wuwei's flaxseed yellow rice. 

It was almost a tour of Gansu Province where the Phantom Bikers also fueled on guagua in Xiguan and stir fried potato noodles with pork in Dingxi to prelude a roadside lunch of chicken gluten stew in Jiuquan before realizing that the best hangover antidote is the souherb hot pot of Tianshui. 

But the flavorful origins of the Thursday Club will only emanate from the tokwa't baboy and reheated refrigerated leftovers that somehow painted colors in the black pages of the quarantine.