April 2013 Ramble!

NERDS' Ramble No. 281 - 10th March 2013.


Those Present – Froggy, Paco, Matt, Lafayette, Sandyballs and Bronco.

The Froggy Non-Ramble.

The NERDS were now well into the run-up to Froggy's grand retirement, and as a special honour were allowing him to be in charge of today's ramble. Given Froggy's reputation for getting everything dead well organised we were all eagerly anticipating a long walk, a good meal and lots of drinks. Well, in the end I suppose two out of three might not have been bad going.

The joining instructions for once were unambiguous – all meet at Seaford station. Fine, no problems so far. Froggy led us in the general direction of The Boot which he had thoughtfully ascertained would be open at the present unsociable hour. We decided to drink outside to get away from all the Old Trouts who, even at that early hour, were clogging up the pub to drink tea, or whatever Old Trouts drink in the morning.

Outside all the seats were covered in the previous night's rain, so after Matt had insisted we move tables about three times we settled down with our pints to discuss matters of great import. Sandyballs reported that he had ordered the teeshirts for the 25th celebration ramble and they would cost us each a huge amount for the privilege of owning one.  Moan, moan, still it had to be done. Next, he said Madame The Home Secretary had once again personally invited him to take over the running of Gatwick South Immigration control that summer for the princely sum of £18 per hour. Meanwhile she, as supervising officer, would sit around in the tea room on a salary of about £150 grand with her feet up  drinking wine. Lafayette applauded this and said he thought Madame Home Sec was obviously a decent type of manager who knew how to get the best out of her staff.

Paco who was distraught at the recent death of Baroness Thatcher sobbed that he would be unable to attend her funeral if we all cleared off to Spain in the near future, so Sandyballs said he'd have a private word with Madame Home Sec. and see what he could do about getting him a personal invite. Froggy availed himself of the opportunity given him to speak by the “ talking beer mug” (no vases of nasturtiums this month) and said we all ought to drink up and carry on rambling. No-one took a blind bit of notice  so Froggy went off and got another round in.

While Froggy was away, Matt put on his meany meany gloves ( the ones with no fingers) and said that as Froggy was leaving the office soon he was taking on the responsibilirty of clearing his locker out of old landing cards, HO files, porn mags and superfluous condoms. Lafayette pointed out that any Fray Bentos meat pies should be straightaway returned to Hungerford otherwise Froggy would be summoned back to do the washing up, and Sandyballs said that any mysterious manuscripts entitled “memoirs” should be torn up and fed to the seagulls.

Froggy came back with the pints and said we really did have to ramble after these because we were meeting Bronco in the Laughing Fish for lunch and he'd be getting lonely. However after this one another pint ensued, the morning was turning out well, the sun was out, the seats had dried, the Harveys was good and a dispute arose as to whether Matt and Mike Clarke were one and the same person – like Superman. I mean you never saw them in the same place at the same time, did you? And Matt certainly had dubious ancestry coming from the Isle of Krypton which allegedly  turned you green if you got too close to it.

At last the Routemaster was worn down by NERDS' lethargy and persuaded to allow us to get the bus to Denton rather than ramble through the Newhaven wetlands. Time had since marched on and Malcolm might have bought the pub or at least another flashy 4x4 by the time we got there.

Since it was nearly lunch time and since this had been delayed so much by an inconsiderate Froggy, Sandyballs felt a compelling need to visit the chip shop on Seaford High street where he was a regular customer on rambling days. Then all the Old Git NERDS piled on to the bus leaving Young Git NERD to pay his own bus fare once again and we all rode off to Denton.

I suppose you could say that that day's ramble took place between the bus stop at Denton Corner and The Laughing Fish – all one half a mile of it. Anyway, rounding the corner in sight of the pub we saw Bronco sat outside drinking a coke or something innocuous. We dragged him inside and found that the Australians who had previously run the establishment were no longer there but there was rather a delicious barmaid called Krista who was at our service.

Krista herself might have been worth the journey (she was) but the rest of The Laughing Fish experience was pretty rubbish. The food was substandard and overpriced and the service took far too long. Poor Krista did her best but she seemed to have no help at all and was trying to deal with two groups of hungry people. So, saddened that yet another pub was failing in the NERDS' approved stakes we upped and headed for The Engineer. At least we knew this place would be clean, serve fantastic meals and have a politically correct landlord who would serve us excellent beer (well, at least we felt comfortablre there even if everything else was crap).

As usual the place was full of kids but Froggy managed to get Bob's ear and ascertain that his retirement party would still be on the following week. Mucho cheese and prawns were going to be produced beacause we know that Bob always does an excellent cheese board for occasions like this. I mean, Froggy only gets to retire once – what will he have to talk about after?

And so the latest “ramble” came to an end. We had drunk a lot of Harvey's and walked a bit ; seen a nice barmaid and a crap pub; got Bronco back in the NERDS and confirmed Froggy's party next week. Should all be fun – can't wait.

Lafayette.