NERDS' Ramble No. 297 - 4^th August 2014.

Those Present – Froggy, Matt, Lafayette.

The Maize maze Ramble.

 Sandyballs had delegated this ramble to Lafayette because he was moving his daughter into a house nearer him ( spot the deliberate mistake here). Lafayette had delegated the business to Froggy since he'd done last month's and was so, so exhausted, so Froggy had come up with a wizzo route to Upper Dicker. Pity about the turn out, though. Everybody must have suffered sun stroke from last month or something. Oh well, three's a quorum – or a crowd depending on how you looked at it.

On the train to Lewes Matt happened to drop out that he'd been to Goodwood recently and made a five pound bet – on a horse.Wow!

Such is the high level of excitement in the everyday life of the NERDS. Did he win? We never found out; but just going there and smelling the money had been enough to turn Matt on. Hoping to get a drink out of him Froggy and Laf. manoeuvred him into Vic's on the platform for a cognac but none there was to be found. “No, cognac's off,” spat the ginger dwarf in response to our pleas. “ But we're all over eighteen and it's past ten o'clock,” wheedled Froggy.

To no avail. Heartless cow. “My good woman, don't you know who I am....” began Lafayette, before being shown the empty bottle. “Oh bugger,”he said, “S'pose we'll have to drink rum .”

And so we got just one drink in before the train came to take us to Berwick.

Froggy had taken an original idea from Lafayette, (go round the reservoir, eat at Pete's), looked at it, thought about it, lengthened it and drawn a map. So nothing (in theory) should go wrong. Again it was a nice day and we were in shorts (remember this fact; it becomes relevant later). So we set off towards the reservoir. Except where recently there had been a good view and a bit of a field there was now a pile of maize between us and it,

waving about threateningly like something out of one of those American horror films where children get dragged in and end up as screaming skeletons.

“This wasn't here when I drew the map,” wailed Froggy. “Maybe it's grown since then,” said Laf. “It's a very quick crop.” “Perhaps we might find a pot of gold in the middle, and all become rich,” suggested Matt. “Don't be daft,” retorted Lafayette. “ The only people who would think that are those who believe in leprech.....

anyway we're in England now.” So we carefully skirted the field of maize, went on a bit and found the reservoir in it's usual place.

Lafayette tried out his new binoculars on all the wildlife on the reservoir and found they seemed to get nearer.

Froggy was still having difficulty holding the map the right way up, and Matt was looking fearfully over his shoulder just in case we were being pursued by nasty leprech......whatever, those Irish thingies that turn you into a screaming skeleton. Or is that a banshee? Anyway, we got round the deadly reservoir without too much trouble and headed for Pete's Yew Tree for a pint.

This was nice. We sat in Pete's back garden in the sun and had two pints. Froggy wanted to go back and get a third (something to do with the somewhat mature barmaid having huge knockers which she plonked on the bar while grinning at you) Eventually we told him it was his ramble, he was routemaster and he ought to take his role more seriously – like get us to Upper Dicker in time for lunch.

Apparently that day there had been a minute's silence for World War One at about eleven o'clock. This was just when Froggy was in the middle of telling us about one of his expeditions with His New Best Friends (Derek or Curly Clarke). His eloquence only paused when a renegade wasp flew into his glass and threatened to sting his beer. Lafayette called for an immediate mandatory two minutes silence (might as well cash in) while we killed the wasp and remembered the other forty million dead wasps who had died nose-diving into people's beer over the years.

Anyway on we went and shortly after pitched up at The Plough at Upper Dicker.

Not a bad choice of pub. Bags of room to sit out in the garden;

lots of milfs and kids to oggle at (the milfs, not the kids, of course), pretty good food and lots of Harveys.

Matt made a friend of the landlord of The Plough by talking to him a lot but didn't manage to get a discount – or even a free pudding. Froggy talked about his New Best Friends and Lafayette became jealous because he hadn't got any New Best Friends.

Matt carried on saying he was on hobknobbing terms with Katie Price and Peter Andray at which point Lafayette completely stopped being jealous.

After lunch we wandered round Upper Dicker and photographed a cat lying on a gravestone in a cemetery (where else?).

So Lafayette tried to kidnap it and called it his New Best Friend but the others made him put it back (Bastards!). And so we began the return journey, and guess what, we got lost.

The weather was really pleasant. The sun was shining, the birds were tweeting (or else on Facebook) but after a while Lafayette noticed all the pleasant green fields looked just like each other and Froggy was holding the map upside down again. Oh Dear!

The Routemaster sent us all over one large field to look for the appropriate exit but we just got loster. Round and round we went until Lafayette spied a farm worker who directed us through a shitty farm full of shitty cows. But at least it was in the generally right direction. Until.....

We came to another, what had once been a grassy field, and was now a maize ocean, nay a maize universe of impenetrably high crap. No good for NERDS this. We tried to penetrate (as they say) but got rebuffed. The only way was round the edges between the hedges and the maize. OK, it was do-able but at a cost. Remember we were all in shorts, yes we were, and the only viable way forward was through

a shit load of nettles.

Lafayette reckoned this was one of the most painful twenty minutes he had ever endured on a ramble. It surpassed even watching Philby trying to chat up every barmaid he would meet. (“And now I'm on step 3, kiss her all up her arm and talk to her in poetry while fluttering my big brown eyes” -Ugh!). Yes it was more painful even than this. Requiescat in Excelsis to Philby, and all that.

As we finally emerged somewhere near the Berwick Arms everybody's legs were inflamed and whizzing with nettle rashes zooming up and down. We soon got used to it. We were hard men, were we not NERDS? Yes, but it still hurt like hell! So we went to said pub and consoled ourselves in drink, and admired the barmaid, and didn't chat her up, and then returned to Lewes and thence homewards.

An interesting ramble and getting lost and bitten by nettles, leprechauns and banshees could not be attributed to Froggy. He'd taken us to a couple of good pubs and we'd had a good walk and not a bad meal. So it had been a success!

Hope all you lazy NERDS who didn't come are feeling guilty, and Lafayette hopes all your New Best Friends shun you too.

See you soon.

Lafayette.