NERDS' Ramble No. 331. Wed. 21st June 2017.Those Present:
Matt, Sandyballs, Lafayette, Froggy, Paco, Curly.
Snow White and The Five DwarfsA couple of weeks ago it had been Matt's birthday.
He was now a hundred and fifteen, and to mark this occasion he had insisted on being made NERDS' Route-Master. The joining instructions were a complete shambles. First of all Lafayette, on the instructions of Sandyballs, had given directions to go to Worthing by train and to meet up along the way. Matt had plotted a Route-Master coup and insisted he was in charge; that the trip would be made by bus
(for reasons of economy) and that we should be dressed as some of the Seven Dwarfs with himself as Snow White.
( Actually Lafayette made up this last bit but it gives B.T. a chance to dig out some pictures.)
Ramble day dawned sunny and hot.
The country had been in the grip of a heatwave for a few days and people were dying in the streets of heat exhaustion – Lafayette loved it. It was like an average day in Pakistan, except that when he had been there in 1985, there had been no Taliban,
he'd spent all his time drinking,
playing cricket
or hash running
and the NERDS had not yet been invented.
And so Four Dwarfs and Snow White went to StarBucks in Brighton
to meet Sandyballs. The latter was currently struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was no longer Routemaster, but Snow White took command and shepherded us all on to the 700 bus to Worthing.
One sweaty hour later we alighted in Worthing where Snow White promised us hours of slogging over concrete roads until we got to some obscure restaurant where she had booked us in for dinner at half past four. Dismay gripped us all. We were dying of too much sun and not enough beer, surely we were not in for a long day of actual rambling. Power must have completely gone to Snow White's head! We traipsed through Worthing centre. There were lots of interesting market stalls and shops but to tarry we were not allowed. Froggy
wanted to buy some boxer shorts to change into at dinner time but even this reasonable request was not allowed.
Eventually Matt steered us all into the Rose and Crown
and generously bought us all a drink a) because we were dying of heat and lack of under pants, and b) because it had been his birthday recently. The pub was nice, the barmaid was nice and there was a pleasant, cool garden outside where we sat round a table.
Matt was keeping an iron grip on the proceedings and insisted on everybody moving to another table since he'd bought us a drink and because he could do what he liked.
Ooooh.... the Power!
When lunchtime came the scramble was on to get “pensioner portions.”
The pub obviously catered for the, ahem, more mature clientele, especially as the restaurant part seemed to be stuffed with oldies who had left their Zimmer frames and mobility scooters outside. Lafayette liked the idea of getting himself a mobility scooter; it might take the slog out of cycling up to Southease or walking back from the Co-op with the usual shopping bag full of wine bottles. He knew that Sandyballs already had his eye on one of those “powered” bicycles that you see advertised in the Sunday papers. Well, why not. NERDS aren't getting any younger. Then Matt could invest in a gilded coach to take him to his cruise ship when he was in one of his “Snow White” days.
Anyway, lunch was terrific and very cheap, and so The NERDS then retired to the lounge
with coffees and brandies
to mull over the implications of Brexit. However instead we ended up listening to Froggy's account of his cowboy holiday in Spain where, apparently, he had faced down Sergio Leone himself in a gunfight and whupped his ass
..... and had then written some doleful ditty about it called “ Gunfight Blues.” which all of Spain was now humming and which had turned him into a famous international writer and earned him the Nobel Prize for crap songs. Lafayette was insanely jealous (not.)
More brandies came,
the conversation veered towards the surreal.
Paco declared that when he died he wanted to have loud Wagner music played at his funeral just to wake up all his neighbours in Seaford and to show that any left wing tendencies he may have had in life had been obliterated by his death bed repentance. Lafayette said he would be pleased to arrange such a conversion and would speak to his friend, Maria Corbyn, the famous all party M.P. about this important matter.
Glad to have put the world to rights yet again, the NERDS were shepherded
back to Brighton where it was still stinking hot, so we decided to go home rather than try to accompany Froggy on his ever constant quest for comfortable undercrackers.
Thanks go to Matt who as an ex- scaffolder employed a delicate touch yet firm grip on us all as that day's Routemaster. Watch out for next month when we might actually do a rural ramble just like in the Olden Days.
Los Nierdos para Siempre!
Lafayette.
