August 2013.
10/7/13 – Those Present – Froggy, Lafayette, Sandyballs.
This was a sort of boring ramble because only three NERDS turned up. The three who came walked through Lewes High Street and then ground their way up the hill to the golf club. It was a bright sunny day (ie. hot) so we were knackered by the time we got to the top of the hill. However, from then on we had the beauty of the Downs to contemplate and a long way to go.
Descending into Glynde the NERDS positioned themselves in the back garden of The Trevor.
We vaguely wondered why Paco had failed to turn up, and a quick phone call established that he had mis-read the joining instructions (no comment) - first off he thought he should have got the 10 20 train instead of the earlier one; then by the time he had realised his mistake his daughter had walzed off with his car, so disenabling him from joining us for lunch. Only Paco.....
So another NERDS cock-up. To celebrate, the good NERDS ate posset and compote for dessert and went back to Lewes on the train. The bad NERD stayed at home and never knew what he had missed. Those present ate icecreams on the bridge over The Mighty Ouse and popped into The Gardeners to sample Harvey's Wild Hop (beer).
Then they went home – See, told you it was a boring ramble.
20/8/13 – Those present – All the above plus Paco – hooray!
Matt was preparing to go on a cruise so again was not present. F**k only knows how you prepare to go on a cruise..... I mean, once you've shaved off all your body hair, packed your speedos, drenched yourself in cologne, packed the odd wank mag and cleaned your teeth what else is there? Hope he meets someone nasty who'll spend all his money!
So, this was to be another Froggy-organised ramble, so nothing could possibly go wrong.....or could it?
On the train to Lewes Lafayette met up with Les Autres and then, because he was feeling generous, helped a couple of young French tourists to cross from platform 3 to platform 2 to get their London train. ( Today's first arduous task). He had actually thought of getting them to join the NERDS since numbers seemed to be diminishing, but these two were a bit young and one of them was a (rather pretty) girlie. But a girlie nonetheless.
In to Vic's to meet Sandyballs and to consume cafe cognacs and bacon sandwiches (it was breakfast time, after all).
During the train journey Paco told us he had landed this fabulous job. He had been specially selected after a gruelling selection board to go into the City and work as a planning expert for Merrill Lynch. Apparently he had been chosen for his fantastic strategic abilities in financial management and his proven skills in making early starts and working till he dropped. Sandy balls was dead jealous about this. He had only managed to score some low grade job in a government department flipping passports and being nice to people. How are the mighty fallen. Sandy balls, however, took comfort from the fact that he was at least doing a proper job which was worthwhile, and wasn't in it just for the money as Paco obviously was.
Anyway, back to the ramble. Our special train took us on a very weird route, all round the houses and finally chucked us out at Pevensey which is roughly where Froggy wanted to start off.
The day was bright and sunny (hot again) and we went through the town a bit then turned into some fields which were knee deep in sheep crap.
Then he promised Lafayette piggies......
Now Lafayette likes piggies. He has always had a fondness for them since Rye when he and BT did a piggie call over a field and got half a dozen black and white porkers to come up and have their tums scratched. ( Lafayette puts it down to his mother doing something similar to him when he was in his manger... but perhaps we won't go into that too deeply). So we were led in the direction of a Piggy Petting farm where Lafayette was told he could indulge his funny hobby.
On arrival Lafayette was horrified to see that it was a pork sausage petting farm instead; the piggies were allegedly all out the back waiting to be scratched (gently, of course).
Now to see the piggies in their natural habitat. But, disappointment bitter and acute was in store for Lafayette. He was told the piggies were “off” that day. He scoured the piggy paddocks, looked into all the little corners, gave a lot of piggy calls, stamped his foot in rage a lot but piggies coming forth there were none. Lafayette blamed Froggy for misleading him out of spite, and Sandyballs who he caught guiltily munching a sausage roll and looking smug. Lafayette wept bitter tears and vowed he would never be nice to Froggy in write-ups again.
To compensate Lafayette for this singular failure to produce piggies on demand, Froggy promised him a nice lunch in a special pub he had read about in his rambling guide. Lafayette and the others could hardly wait. They had been in The Royal Oak and Castle before and it had been a nice dinner. Good Old Froggy!
Nobody could believe it! Round the corner we came, all ready for our dinners and the pub sprang into view – only it looked a bit, sort of er... dead. There were no happy people sitting around quaffing pints and eating lots of yummy food. Froggy began to shit himself. It was dinner time, the NERDS were hungry, nay very hungry and lunch had been promised at this recommended pub. As feared, the pub had stopped trading ages ago. Stupid Froggy! Fancy not checking this out, what a cock-up! (number 3).
The NERDS began looking round for a rope and a suitable tree. Froggy started gibbering with fear promising there would be no more cock-ups, promising he would buy everyone lunch out of his own pocket next week; promising he would even buy Lafayette his own piggy, and promising he would keep it in his own shed, feed it and take it for walks so Lafayette wouldn't have to. The NERDS didn't know whether to eat Froggy or hang him upside down by his bollocks and then eat him. Luckily, in the distance, Paco espied another pub sign which might just save Froggy's bacon (lol).
We sped hopefully to The Smugglers Inn and Froggy was so pleased to find it open and serving food he dived inside and sat sweating with relief at a nearby table. The Smugglers was not, it must be said, in the same class as The Royal Oak and Castle , but it was adequate for NERDS' highly refined tastes. The beer was Shepherd Neame (Ugh! Crap!) so Lafafayette had to drink cider, and the fish pie was almost gone, so Lafayette had to have the last scrapings from the dish, but apart from all this it was OK.....ish.
It was friendly, in a sort of working class way, and the barmaid, Bonney, was persuaded to take our photo.
After lunch Froggy took command again and swore on his chidrens' lives that there would be no more cock-ups. How could anything else go tits up we wondered. A little more rambling was promised, and another pub where we had been before and where we had played darts and drunk good beer (not Shepherd Neame!).
So Froggy led us out into the wilderness of Pevensey (or was it Westham?) . He marched us up the road, hesitated, marched us back again, turned us round , back the first way, no this isn't right, why won't the map take me where it should?
The NERDS were by now resigned to massive cock-up number 4.
However we weren't frizzling in the centre of the country side and we knew we weren't actually far from The Smugglers, so we took the bull by the horns (or the Frog by the balls) turned round and walked back into town. Then on a little bit till we reached The Heron, a nice pub which sold Harvey's and wasn't too far from the station we needed to get home in one piece and this side of Whitsun Monday.
In the pub we had a few pints, calmed down (one of us) and gradually chilled out. It was a nice sunny afternoon, the beer was good, we weren't dead and we were going home. What could be better than all that? Eventually we even got the right train for Lewes while Froggy in mitigation for his previous sins told us all about his erotic dreams and the hole he'd made in his mattress to accommodate them (or something).
It had been an interesting ramble up to Froggy's high standards and we thank him for his trouble and for not getting anybody killed. There could perhaps have been a teensy wheensy bit more decisiveness and follow through for some of the details, but it had all worked out well (except for Lafayette's piggies) and we had got home OK, so congratulations to Froggy.
Let's hope some more NERDS show up in the future or else we might have to recruit new members from the c***s. Heaven forbid.
Lafayette.
