March 2018 Ramble

NERDS' Ramble No. 340 – Wed. 7th Mar. '18.

Those Present

NERDS – Sandyballs, Lafayette, Froggy, Matt, Curly, The Bish, Paco.

Guest Nerds – Imogen, Bandido.

Darksiders – Steady Eddie, Jane, Debbie, Marion, Roger, Dave, Robert.

Joint Ramble March 2018.

Lafayette received notification of the next Darkside ramble. He opened his diary

and there on the same date was written “NERDS.” Shock, horror, nasty empty sinky feeling – Lafayette was double booked! Would he have to make a choice about which faction to follow – the easy going NERDS who rambled not a lot but spent most of their time being sociable in pubs, or the more professional Darkside who believed that walking was actually an essential part of a “ramble” but who also were not averse to being sociable in pubs. Tricky this, hmm.

Fortunately, Lafayette noticed that the starting venue for the Darksiders was to be in Lewes. “Aha,” thought Laf. maybe with my infinite powers of persuasion I can swing a joint venture and get out of this embarassing hole wot I have dug.” And so after a couple of phone calls to a couple of Ramble Masters the project was give joint blessing to go forward. Phew! So now nothing could go wrong.......

It was the due day. Everyone had been told to be in the right place at (more or less) the right time. Darksiders and NERDS had been checking each other out on Google to see if there were any maniacs in the other group which they might have to avoid. (Both sides were keeping stumm about their own secret maniacs.) People started drifting in to The Runaway (cafe) on Lewes station; The NERDS started ordering coffee cognacs and putting their feet up.

Then came the alarming news that the trains were all screwed up from points north. Some pillock had decided to end it all on the track at Streatham and so people were not going to be on time and the whole venture would become a disaster – scream!! Lafayette was gnawing his elbows down to the shoulder blades; He was contemplating committing hara kiri and had already got Sandyballs to agree to behead him in an honourable way. What a disgrace! His whole family would have to leave Nehaven and go into exile! Meanwhile the rest of the NERDs had apparently noticed nothing amiss and were quietly reading newspapers, petting the odd black dog and getting on with seeing how many cafe cognacs they could drink.

Steady Eddie came up with the obvious solution. “ Let the laggards get a taxi to the next destination or just follow us along the road.” he suggested. OK, Lafayette came down from the ceiling, somebody poured a cafe cgnac down his throat ( good for stress) and the lumbering crocodile set off in a raggedy, un-coordinated way out of Lewes and towards The Juggs for the (one and only) pit stop.

The weather was not too bad even though it was early March. It was not cold and we were keeping to the tarmaccy bits so that nobody really got muddy feet. Steady Eddie and Lafayette raced together to The Juggs in Kingston so that they could stand on the high ground and indicate the venue to all the slower ones.

The Juggs was the same as ever.

It had a roaring fire which paralysed everyone who was daft enough to sit in its vicinity, and enough beer to keep both groups happy. Bandido objected to having his photo taken and barked at Froggy.

Sandyballs took out his deaf aid ( all the better to hear you with, my dear) and offered to lend it to Roger to enhance his cycling experience.

Matt looked at the women of the Darkside

and decided he'd never seen anything so exotic; NERDS don't have regular women in their group; they don't understand them; they come in different shapes and sizes and have different priorities in life. They do sometimes buy you drinks with a view to making you do things you don't understand but a whole book could be written about women and their wiles. Anyway, shortly afterwards, the two laggards, Marion and Dave turned up a little late and breathless from having to catch up and so the two groups were now complete in numbers.

Lunch was to be taken back in Lewes so Lafayette and Steady Eddie managed to prise everyone away from the bar and the fire to head for the next destination. The continuing walk took in a white windmill

and a horse enclosure where B.T had once been molested by a randy donkey. (Things were different then; B.T. had no central NERDS committee to complain about the donkey's harrassment. In those days he would have simply have been laughed at and told to fuck off. Probably the same nowadays actually. But I digress.

The route proceeded over the Downs

which, now that the sun had come out, gave on to a marvellous view over Sussex, over the Mighty Ouse and even as far as the sea. Steadie Eddie, Lafayette and Debbie admired the view

and descended the Downy path towards Lewes prison (national monument) and then headed towards Southover along a muddy path on the outskirts of Lewes.

Arriving on Suicide Bridge

over the A27 Lafayette suffered another panic attack. He had arranged for the NERDS/Darksiders to eat at 1300hrs in the Swan Inn at Southover but it was now 5 to 1. Would we be in time? Would the pub wait for us? Would they cancel our tables (we were 14 people after all.) what if it all went wrong? Oh the disgrace! Oh the ignominy! Would everybody hate him? Lafayette borrowed Debbie's phone and hysterically phoned the pub saying we all might be late and how terribly, terribly sorry he was (grovel, grovel). The pub didn't mind, in fact the pub didn't give a toss, and Steady Eddie just stood there with a disdainful look and said “ If you hadn't wasted time doing that we would have been there five minutes ago.” How true. How true.

And so of course we weren't late at all and we walked in and greeted Robert who had driven down to see us because he had a bad hip and everything started going to Lafayette's plan again.

We had all been put on two separate, adjacent tables, and because of the natural order of things the NERDS

went on one table and the Darksiders on the other. No discrimination like, just separate tribes. Except Lafayette sat himself on the Darkside table because they don't bitch as much and you get more drinks out of their whip.

Unfortunately he was sitting with his back to the NERDS

and every so often was aware of threatening rumblings of conversation. “What have I done now?” thought Lafayette. “Do they think I've insulted them? Have they got it in for me? Are they plotting to take away my title of NERDS' Scribe and hand it over to Froggy? Do they think he's a better writer than me? Is my NERD life over?” Lafayette's inner torment shreiked at him.

Meanwhile behind him the NERDS, totally unaware of all this mental paranoia merely got on with their meals and carried on swigging their drinks and ignored Lafayette.

The food was pretty good. Some of the Darkside had Nigerian chicken curry (!!) which was quite pleasant, then a load of wine, then more wine, then cafes with clandestine calvados then it all got a bit blurry.

The NERDS disappeared early leaving Lafayette behind to wonder if they had gone out to set up an ambush for him somewhere to kick him into unconsciousness and to feed him to that big, black dog they'd brought with them. But in the event nothing of this sort happened.

After lunch Lafayette's nerves were in such shreds that he grabbed a couple of Darkside women and ran off with them to the Depot in Lewes to hide and to drink lots of gin. Marion and Debbie seemed to like the Depot, it was classy after all and some of the bar staff were young and male so the ladies were happy. Of course, Lafayette's secret drinking tryst was interrupted by Mrs Sandyballs who came and introduced herself to the Darksiders, but who Lafayette just knew had been sent over by Sandyballs to spy on him and report back to the NERDS. “She'll just tell them my literary talents have all disappeared and Froggy will definitely be the new Scribe,” he thought. Luckily after that he blacked out and found himself back at Lavender Lodge.

Well, apart from all the mental organisational anguish which that day had caused Lafayette (joke), the ramble seemed to have gone OK and both NERDS and Darksiders seemed to have had a good time. Thanks be to all who came from miles away and thanks to those who were injured (Robert) and who just came to see us.

Maybe Lafayette will do a joint cliff walk ramble in the summer if he's still in the NERDS then and not been gobbled up by a big black dog. Vamos a Ver.

Lafayette.