The October Ramble

THE NERDS’ Ramble No. 251

Wednesday 27th Oct. 2010.

Those Present - Lafayette, Froggy, Sandyballs, Matt, The Captain, (El Paco).

The Skeleton Ramble.


Matt was playing host that day so met the faithful at Seaford Station wearing his brown corduroy driving cap. Lafayette fancied one of these but thought it looked a bit gay unless you could persuade everyone it was actually a Breton fisherman’s hat. Fat chance of that ! he’d have to wear his ferret poacher’s flat cap instead then everyone would know he came from North of Watford and kept ferrets in his coat pocket (Ouch!!)

So to Matt’s for pre - ramble hospitality. Well! The lavishisity of it all ! There were cut glass tumblers for the Jamesons , lots of choccy bics, even coffee was laid on by Matt’s young negro servant who now followed him every where and called him “Master” (an old NERDS’ tradition dating from the Quazi days of “He Who Drank Too Much Red Wine“). We were ushered into the front room where we could do least harm and started interrogating El Paco as to why he was dipping out of rambling with the rest of us.

Now, Dear Readers, you are going to find this very hard to believe; in fact by general consensus this was to be the worst excuse ever so far heard for getting out of a ramble: Apparently El Paco was having a skeleton delivered that afternoon and had to be in to receive it! What the fuck was going on we all thought ; had El Paco become Head of the Seaford Mafia and was carrying out a routine sweep-up operation; or else had he conceived a somewhat dubious passion for He who Drank Too Much Red Wine and felt he was unable to live without him? No, nothing as exotic as these (Thank God); Simply that his daughter, the lovely Lara, had become a medical student and needed her practice skeleton sent home for her to…er practise on.

Away from all the luxury of chez Matt the NERDS went outside, found a bus stop and started the ride to Beachy Head(ish). Froggy , of course had to pay a small fortune to get there because of his delicate age while the rest of us sat around for free in Old Git mode. Finally we got somewhere near Eastbourne where it was high and windy and where we could descend into the town over Downish sort of grassy paths.

Somebody obviously knew the way as we weaved through quite nice streets in The Meads area though Matt (who was that day’s route master) led from the back. He did however know where a good place for lunch was since we ended up in The Ship, a very posh place with actual carpets on the floor and sexy barmaids for our delectation. The NERDS finding it hard to settle, moved tables about three times to get the most advantageous view of the barmaids and wondered about keeping a couple of seats free since Paco had threatened to join us for lunch and was going to bring his skeleton as a (sort of ) Mystery Guest. Lunch was excellent and quite reasonably priced too.

Just as we were reluctantly leaving The Ship and bracing ourselves to go out into the nasty blowy autumnal weather, we were hailed by a familiar voice. It was El Paco who was late (as usual ) and said it was because his skeleton had stood him up and hadn’t wanted to come with him for lunch. However, he had travelled over in his car and when asked for a lift back made no bones about agreeing (ha,ha).

Matt who knew this part of Eastbourne quite well then directed everyone down the road to another pub called The Pilot. This was a more chummy place with an ugly barman and no carpet on the floor but friendly nonetheless. Since Paco had already missed lunch at The Ship he settled here to devour a huge steak. Meanwhile Matt was spreading a rumour that the Chords were going into liquidation and were going to make all their funds over to the NERDS since we were a registered charity (for Old Git Drinkers). Nobody believed him especially since Goldenballs was a chords founder member and was unlikely to part with a penny.

After a while here we all squeezed into Paco’s car and headed back to Seaford where we ended up in The Plough catching up with Andy Cap Julian Thomas. He was fleeing both his brothers and the dreaded Rocket Radio in Lewes and preparing to spend the winter in Hong Kong and Manila where it was more likely to be warm and sunny than over here. Not a bad idea, we thought, but instead we should have to stay here and take part in the “Mike Clarke Ramble “ which sadly will not be written about since it’s not NERDS’ official.

So, thanks to Matt for route mastering and enabling us to see how the other half live, and thanks to El Paco for the lift and we were all disappointed not to have met his
new friend. Maybe next time, although Matt’s worried he will turn up with a big scythe over his shoulder.

Never mind , it will soon be the festive season so the NERDS can all spend their time going into pubs and drinking stuff - for a change.

Bye bye.


Lafayette.