Dear all,
Monday's ramble is being led and masterminded by Froggy (do we never learn). Just in case you haven't heard we will meet at Lafayette's place - Lavender Lodge -from about 10 AM. Expect chaos, mayhem and inordinate consumption of alcoholic beverages - and that is before we even start the ramble.
Sandyballs
(Too many chiefs and not enough Indians)
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
November Ramble Joining Instructions
Dear NERDS,
Froggy has an absolutely amazing idea for a ramble this month.
So all meet at my house at 10 00-1030hrs for the odd drink, then we get the 11 32 train to Southease
where we start the ramble. Eventually we lunch at The Abergavenny Arms
- the details are known only to Froggy (who undoubtedly will make sure the Abergavenny is open for lunch that day).
Lafayette.
Froggy has an absolutely amazing idea for a ramble this month.
So all meet at my house at 10 00-1030hrs for the odd drink, then we get the 11 32 train to Southease
Lafayette.
Monday, November 10, 2014
October 2014 Ramble
NERDS' Ramble No 299. 30th October 2014.
Those Present – Froggy, Sandyballs, Lafayette, Curly Clarke.
The Bad Luck Ramble.
The day started off optimistically with pleasant, sunny weather and not too cold. Luck of the NERDS, we thought since the days beforehand had been rather rainy and squally. However when we were all ranged on Lewes railway station preparing to go to Cooden Beach Sandyballs broke the news that for him it would be a temperance ramble; no drink whatsoever and none for the next few days too since he had a bad tooth and was on strong antibiotics. What rotten luck, we all thought. Fancy having to go on a ramble and not be able to drink, how will he cope, we all thought smugly. Thank God it's not one of us.
Putting aside such melancholy thoughts (at least, SB did) we all entrained for the seaside. On a day like this nothing could possibly go wrong – or could it? On the train Froggy showed us his new smart phone but admitted it was too high tech for him to be able to switch it on. S.B. ever the technical expert took it from him, got it going then found the battery was being rapidly drained by all the porn apps that Froggy had been conned into signing up to by the Orange boys from Lagos. “Just use it as a phone, like try talking to people with it instead of having it enhance your miserable sex life,” advised S.B. Froggy was aghast; he'd paid a lot of money to have teeny weeny pictures of naked black women jumping around flapping their tits at him. Maybe he ought to write to Lagos and ask for his money back, he thought.
Arriving
at the beach we went to The Cooden Beach Hotel where, since it was so pleasant and sunny, we thought we'd sit outside and enjoy the day with a few beers. It was really nice with the sea gently splashing next to us, the beer going down pleasantly and life seeming to favour us all. But the gods were looking down and smirking at each other. “We'll teach those smug NERDS a lesson,” they seemed to say. But more of this later.
In these moments of euphoria Froggy was considered responsible enough to be promoted to the official position of NERDS Quazi, a position previously filled by Philby himself, and which consisted in being trusted to fetch and carry all the drinks to the rest of us all day, and to order and pay for all the meals for everybody. Needless to say Froggy was delighted with the honour of this new role, and stuttered “Thank you, thank you, Master,” to Lafayette who was the official Quazi Keeper.
Eventually Sandyballs managed to prise us out of our self-satisfied musings on life the universe and everything, and insisted we continue the ramble he had got written on the piece of paper he was waving around. Shame really, it was nice sitting there in the sun even though Lafayette had nearly broken his leg stepping into a full bowl of doggy drink water (what bad luck!).
The ramble took us over fields
and more fields. We went into a pleasant caravan park and got lost a few times,
then we found the right route through asking various people, and set off in the direction of The Star Inn where we knew they did good roasts and where we had been several times previously.
Only by now the gods were not just laughing, but rolling about and nudging each other in the ribs. A great disaster was about to fall on our heads. We arrived at the Star Inn, footsore and thirsty, not to mention starving, as we had tramped over quite a few shitty fields and got our feet very wet. Lafayette was first into the pub as he was the hungriest, but lo, the place did not seem to be full of people as it usually was, all eating, drinking and making a noise; there seemed to be a stark lack of atmosphere let alone customers. Lafayette was confronted by a bloke up a ladder painting who told him in no uncertain terms that the pub was closed and likely to remain so for two weeks at least due to refurbishments...............
Lafayette was crushed – no pub, no beer, no dinner, and stranded in the middle of the countryside. Someone must pay!
By this time Sandyballs had realised the iniquitous position he had put every one in through his mis-planning and total lack of preparation, and was haring off down the road before he could be strung up. The NERDS, however, were too dejected to wreak violence on him, all the sunny expectations of the morning had come crashing down, the gods up above were pissing themselves and we were all still ravenous. ( What terrible luck!)
Nothing else to do but to trudge onwards, hungry, thirsty and seething with resentment.
Sandyballs tried to make out it wasn't his fault. Hadn't we been to this pub lots of times? And hadn't it always been open? Yes, but had he thought to check for today? No way, Jose, and as a consequence we were all stranded and desolate.
So on we went, we didn't know where, along the hard main road, our boots killing our feet, on, on past shitty bungalows and rubbishy, shingly roads. The magic of the seaside had all of a sudden disappeared; things all around looked tacky and tired, and our empty stomachs were banging round our knees in frustration.
Things were beginning to look really bad until Lafayette came across two jolly schoolgirls who looked as if they had had their dinner and were in a good mood. “ Excuse me ladies,” quoth Lafayette at his most desperate “But is there by any chance a pub round here where we can get food cos we is dying of hunger?”
“ Of course,” replied the schoolgirls. “ We know all the pubs round here; just go straight on into Pevensey about ten minutes up the road and there are pubs galore.” Lafayette was so grateful he would have kissed them all over had he not risked being thrown in jail because of their lowly age.
So encouraged by the idea that food might not be too far away the NERDS kept going along the road pausing only to buy Kit Kats at a camping shop and Magnums at another shop. Finally we arrived back in what looked like relative civilisation. Houses and shops and pubs that were open. We dived into The Bay Hotel which turned out to do food even at this late hour (not so unlucky after all), and we sat around a large round table
and watched Sandyballs drink diet coke for his manifold sins. He nearly switched to Harveys by mistake for one fleeting instant but the burden of guilt was too much and he relapsed into a sullen silence.
The food here was not up to much but at least it was food and we felt much better after it and a couple of pints. Thereafter we walked along the road to get the train back to Lewes from Pevensey. The station was one of those “in the middle of nowhere”
type statios where you can see the train coming from miles away. Unfortunately, yes, you've guessed it we missed the hourly train by about half a minute and had to wait around in the train shelter for the last one of the day.
( More bad luck; the gods were getting their revenge again).
Anyway, an interesting walk even though it was constantly dogged by mis-management and bad luck. At least the weather was OK and we had a nice train journey. Congratulations to Froggy on becoming NERDS Quazi; maybe, among his other duties, he should be required to ring up the pubs before each ramble to ensure they are open that day.
Next ramble will be No. 301 for reasons already disclosed. Don't get too confused; it's only a number of convenience.
Lafayette.
Those Present – Froggy, Sandyballs, Lafayette, Curly Clarke.
The Bad Luck Ramble.
The day started off optimistically with pleasant, sunny weather and not too cold. Luck of the NERDS, we thought since the days beforehand had been rather rainy and squally. However when we were all ranged on Lewes railway station preparing to go to Cooden Beach Sandyballs broke the news that for him it would be a temperance ramble; no drink whatsoever and none for the next few days too since he had a bad tooth and was on strong antibiotics. What rotten luck, we all thought. Fancy having to go on a ramble and not be able to drink, how will he cope, we all thought smugly. Thank God it's not one of us.
Putting aside such melancholy thoughts (at least, SB did) we all entrained for the seaside. On a day like this nothing could possibly go wrong – or could it? On the train Froggy showed us his new smart phone but admitted it was too high tech for him to be able to switch it on. S.B. ever the technical expert took it from him, got it going then found the battery was being rapidly drained by all the porn apps that Froggy had been conned into signing up to by the Orange boys from Lagos. “Just use it as a phone, like try talking to people with it instead of having it enhance your miserable sex life,” advised S.B. Froggy was aghast; he'd paid a lot of money to have teeny weeny pictures of naked black women jumping around flapping their tits at him. Maybe he ought to write to Lagos and ask for his money back, he thought.
Arriving
In these moments of euphoria Froggy was considered responsible enough to be promoted to the official position of NERDS Quazi, a position previously filled by Philby himself, and which consisted in being trusted to fetch and carry all the drinks to the rest of us all day, and to order and pay for all the meals for everybody. Needless to say Froggy was delighted with the honour of this new role, and stuttered “Thank you, thank you, Master,” to Lafayette who was the official Quazi Keeper.
Eventually Sandyballs managed to prise us out of our self-satisfied musings on life the universe and everything, and insisted we continue the ramble he had got written on the piece of paper he was waving around. Shame really, it was nice sitting there in the sun even though Lafayette had nearly broken his leg stepping into a full bowl of doggy drink water (what bad luck!).
The ramble took us over fields
Only by now the gods were not just laughing, but rolling about and nudging each other in the ribs. A great disaster was about to fall on our heads. We arrived at the Star Inn, footsore and thirsty, not to mention starving, as we had tramped over quite a few shitty fields and got our feet very wet. Lafayette was first into the pub as he was the hungriest, but lo, the place did not seem to be full of people as it usually was, all eating, drinking and making a noise; there seemed to be a stark lack of atmosphere let alone customers. Lafayette was confronted by a bloke up a ladder painting who told him in no uncertain terms that the pub was closed and likely to remain so for two weeks at least due to refurbishments...............
Lafayette was crushed – no pub, no beer, no dinner, and stranded in the middle of the countryside. Someone must pay!
By this time Sandyballs had realised the iniquitous position he had put every one in through his mis-planning and total lack of preparation, and was haring off down the road before he could be strung up. The NERDS, however, were too dejected to wreak violence on him, all the sunny expectations of the morning had come crashing down, the gods up above were pissing themselves and we were all still ravenous. ( What terrible luck!)
Nothing else to do but to trudge onwards, hungry, thirsty and seething with resentment.
So on we went, we didn't know where, along the hard main road, our boots killing our feet, on, on past shitty bungalows and rubbishy, shingly roads. The magic of the seaside had all of a sudden disappeared; things all around looked tacky and tired, and our empty stomachs were banging round our knees in frustration.
Things were beginning to look really bad until Lafayette came across two jolly schoolgirls who looked as if they had had their dinner and were in a good mood. “ Excuse me ladies,” quoth Lafayette at his most desperate “But is there by any chance a pub round here where we can get food cos we is dying of hunger?”
“ Of course,” replied the schoolgirls. “ We know all the pubs round here; just go straight on into Pevensey about ten minutes up the road and there are pubs galore.” Lafayette was so grateful he would have kissed them all over had he not risked being thrown in jail because of their lowly age.
So encouraged by the idea that food might not be too far away the NERDS kept going along the road pausing only to buy Kit Kats at a camping shop and Magnums at another shop. Finally we arrived back in what looked like relative civilisation. Houses and shops and pubs that were open. We dived into The Bay Hotel which turned out to do food even at this late hour (not so unlucky after all), and we sat around a large round table
The food here was not up to much but at least it was food and we felt much better after it and a couple of pints. Thereafter we walked along the road to get the train back to Lewes from Pevensey. The station was one of those “in the middle of nowhere”
Anyway, an interesting walk even though it was constantly dogged by mis-management and bad luck. At least the weather was OK and we had a nice train journey. Congratulations to Froggy on becoming NERDS Quazi; maybe, among his other duties, he should be required to ring up the pubs before each ramble to ensure they are open that day.
Next ramble will be No. 301 for reasons already disclosed. Don't get too confused; it's only a number of convenience.
Lafayette.
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