March 2009 Ramble

N.E.R.D.S Ramble No. 232 Tues. 10. 3. 09.

Those Present  -  Froggy, Matt, B.T., Sandyballs, Lafayette.  -  Still no Bronco.

One of the Longest Rambles We’ve Ever Been On.

No sign of Bronco yet. Some say he gallops round the Downs at night on his white charger rescuing lost maidens. Some say he lives in a shed at the bottom of his garden with a fortune in priceless wristwatches and neighs when asked if he wants his breakfast.

Some say he’s not really bald at all but sports a full head of hair after dark to impress the ladies. All we know is that he’s called The Bronco and he’s a bit poorly.

Good job he couldn’t make this ramble then because it went on for miles and miles and miles.

Sandyballs picked almost everyone up at the station and hosted the aperitifs bash this month.

Apparently B.T. had got up there first and had been guzzling Sandyballs’ good whisky since early on, so we were probably going to have to settle for bread and water before setting out. In the event it was a bit sad because Froggy had lost his mother in law  that morning and couldn’t remember where he’d put her. These things do happen. We still keep expecting Philby to walk through the door and tell us he’s got a bottle of red wine in the back of his car. God forbid! Lafayette reckoned he might shit himself if that were to happen

Anyway, we walked on the concrete along one of Sandyballs’ old cycle routes until turning off somewhere leftish and going between two fields.

It was muddy and the weather was dull. No pub for miles to cheer us up. We got near a river

and a fisher guy put us right. Not that we’d got lost or anything.

Thereafter we had a pleasant riverside walk until arriving at The Anchor at Barkham.

Sandyballs and Lafayette (and possibly Matt and BT) had been here years ago when the pub had been closed but we’d managed to persuade the landlord to flog us a bottle of wine to drink for medicinal purposes on his front lawn. We’d all had sore feet, you see. So we were expecting a warm welcome. Of course it was a different landlord now, some big fat bloke, but he seemed pleased to see us and he sold Harvey’s; what more could you want?

At his point Lafayette came out with a confession. At the, let’s say, “confused” ending to the last ramble he’d been handed the whip purse with all the last bits of shrapnel in it and had gone and lost it. It was a nice blue purse with a clip top, just like every grandma used to have in the old days. Anyway, full of guilt and remorse, Lafayette had sent his wife out every morning early to scour the charity shops to come up with a substitute. And she’d found one – same colour and same clippie type top too, a real smasher!

However half way through Lafayette’s doleful mea culpa just as he was preparing to ask Matt to thrash him as a penance, Sandyballs smirkingly laid the original whip purse on the table and said he’d had it all along.

 Poor Lafayette had been looking forward to being thrashed, he had even been thinking of converting to Catholicism as Matt had told him this was the only way  to gain entry to The Cords, ( Lafayette found out later that Matt was a genital liar in that he was always talking bollocks). So now it was all thwarted ambition and he’d have to stay away from this Secret Society for the Super Rich. Lafayette was angry now and challenged Froggy to a bout of arm wrestling. Froggy bottled out and said he’d got tennis elbow –yeah, yeah, yeah. So much for getting a new purse, well at least the NERDS had got a spare one now.

The food at the Anchor was good, but even so Froggy restricted himself to just one meal for a change. Lafayette had his usual wild boar sausages and chips – it reminds him of shooting the buggers in Pakistan.

Sandyballs has taken to ordering the cheapest meal going and then hoovering up everybody else’s scraps. How very demeaning! The only snag about the pub is that to find the Gents you have to go down a windy corridor, get outside, jump in and out of the river and then ask a shepherd where it is. Access it not easy, but as I said, the food’s O.K.

On the long, long way back (we had suddenly found we were in the middle of the countryside with no taxis or buses available), we got lost by the wrought iron gate, almost had a nasty mishap by the graunchy groin bridge and B.T did a spectacular slipping act  along the bank of the river.

Still no Bronco to sweep in on his white charger and rescue us all although distant strains of someone singing Summertime seemed to be heard occasionally. (Could have been the beer in us all).

After a long, long footsore slog back into Lewes

we all sought solace in the John Harvey Tavern where Matt said he would host the next ramble with Froggy as Routemaster, and where we drank to Rusty who had been dug up by a fox ( Philby had better watch out).

Thanks be to Sandyballs for the route, for being a bad house servant, and (grinding of teeth) for finding the whip purse. Next ramble is Wednesday April 15^th.

           Lafayette.