NERDS' Ramble No.
294. 6th - 9th May 2014.
Those Present
– Lafayette, Froggy, Sandyballs, Paco and BT.
The Second NERDS'
Spanish Expedition.
Paco's lovely sister, Wendy, had given the NERDS the
freedom of her house at Villa Rosa once again (Hooray for Aunty
Wendy!) so that they could spend a few days sharpening up their
Spanish and honing their cooking skills and generally relaxing after
all the hardships of being forced into retirement. You see, being
away from work was beginning to get boring for the NERDS.
Lafayette had shot nearly all the wild boar in Sussex
and had had to turn to “Old Man” bowls simply to get out of the
house. Froggy had already penned two rock operas which had been
produced to great acclamation on the London stage and made him very
famous. Paco had actually managed to get out of bed on perhaps three
occasions but was getting bored with the self discipline this
demanded; and Sandyballs was fed up with running round after
grandchildren and was considering returning to Terminal 3 to pursue a
career sweeping out the bogs.
Anyway Lafayette turned up at Gatwick with something he
was very proud of. He had just bought a new turquoise blue case to
put all his thingummyjigs in but sadly got a frosty reception from
the others. “I'm going nowhere near you with that horrible gay
case.” spat Sandy balls who
was lugging a butch “Bear Grylls” type piece of equipment. “Well,
too bad,” lisped Lafayette. “It's my gay case and I shall
probably even take it through Brighton next year on the Gay Suitcase
March. “ So If you don't like it I'll shove it up your arse and you
can come too.”
Things settled down
however after everyone had had a couple of drinks at the South
Terminal, got lost wandering round looking for each other and taken
on board either a slap up english breakfast ( S.B. And Paco) or a
couple of manky sanwiches (Laf and Froggo.) Pity that the
self-satisfied couple with the nice breakfast had to bolt theirs down
because the flight was being called – my, how the other two
larffed, Ho, ho, ho.
So, in the plane, in the air, down on the ground, arrive
in Valencia.
Now to the lady at car hire. Last year we got a mammoth
people carrying station wagon, bus type thingy, but Paco had asked
for a smaller vehicle and Lafayette was worried that whatever we got
wouldn't be big enough to accommodate four fat bums and one gay case.
Not to worry; the lady was really nice (in spanish), charged us the
earth and gave us a smart red Picasso (just like the ones they ride
round the bullrings to aggravate the bulls).
Since it was actually
Ferrari red (this year's new colour) Paco drove it at an average
speed of 150 kph to give the lie to the rumour that he was really
only a lazy git who couldn't get out of bed.
Arrival chez Wendy. Better be circumspect. Wendy herself
was arriving the following week so no sense in having too many
parties and tearing the place apart. Now we went through the usual
fascinating procedure of finding the right keys and unlocking every
thing in the correct order so that the Albanian bandits who were
hiding around every corner would get bored and go and ransack someone
else's house. Leave them an inch, see, and they're zipping indoors
through your legs and emptying the place before you've even had a
chance to get the key out of the lock!
Everybody now in; a quick look round – no musical
instruments around – Good! Now Froggy won't be tempted to er.... be
creative.
Quick, isolate the snorers and put Laf and S.B. in the
same room so that they can be homo erotic like recently in the New
Forest. Now down to El Garrofer to see what this year's bunch of East
European girlies look like.
El Garrofer hadn't changed much; basic, scuzzy, chip
smells, mangy feral cats round your feet etc, but a pleasant canopy
of chestnut tree leaves over our heads when we sat down at our
table and, of course, the very real pleasure of our first
omelette and chips served by the enchanting Alina from somewhere a
bit further East of here.
Wonder where B.T. is? He wasn't there
when we arrived at the house but I expect he knows where he'll find
us.
Sure enough, we were half way through our second drink
when BT screeched to a halt brandishing a large bottle of gin and a
large bottle of calvados since he'd been through Andorra on his way
here and thought his companions might be a bit thirsty. Hooray! So we
all had another drink and BT and SB had a little rant together about
lost inheritances and how old folk were mean and smelt of wee.
The afternoon was going well; we hadn't even touched
BT's bottles yet, the Garrofer wine was flowing and it was then
that SB and Paco decided to get jobs manning Hadrian's Wall ( a
current favourite topic of conversation for Froggy ) when devolution
took place ( fat chance); and BT came up with the idea of a joint
NERDS credit card ( but taken care of by him) to avoid the annoying
necessity of calling for a new wip every five minutes. (It was to be
entitled Los NIERDOS Abuja). Luckily we were all just still sober
enough to reject this idea on the grounds that somebody might
possibly lose it if they were sitting around having a crap somewhere
– especially if they kept it with their mobile phone. Can't
remember what happened after that; expect we all went back chez
Wendy, stopped drinking, cleaned our teeth, said our prayers and went
to bed.
Day
2 – A musical interlude and other adventures.
Next morning Lafayette descended, and breathing in the
atmosphere and seeing the recumbent form of Paco surrounded by a
plethora of fag butts gave him a new name. Now known as El Fago, the
Spanish one was obviously enjoying his holiday and destroying the
precarious health of the others with his poisonous habit. Not to
worry; worse things were to happen. Froggy got up still pissed and
began to loudly sing every song he had ever heard – just to make
sure everyone else was getting up and was appreciating his musical
talent.
Now that we were all awake a plan was needed. First of
all stuff a mattress down Froggy's throat then have breakfast. BT
then became all artistic and started to dance around papping everyone
with his camera. Why? We look the same as last year only slightly
more debauched. But BT wanted to get some ammunition for embroidering
the write-up so we all sat around pretending we were Kate Middleton
and looked beautiful.
Finally some pushy person decided we needed to go for a
walk (!!!) so we sloped off down the road towards the sea and started
to pick our way along the shore.
It's a sod how the sand keeps
getting into your sandals n'est-ce pas? Maybe that's why they're
called sandals after all.
Froggy resumed his loud and tuneless
repertoire of obscure pop songs; the Spanish all seemed to have
magically disappeared in fright. The NERDS' patience broke; the
holiday was becoming just a complete cacaphony of Froggy orientated
self indulgence (and it was constantly very, very
loud). Someone threatened to pitch Froggy over a cliff on to the
nasty sharp rocks below; two others started fingering their Laguiole
knives and measuring up the throat from which this fucking row was
emanating. Froggy finally realised he was in imminent danger of being
considered ever so slightly unpopular so said he would consider
imposing a sponsored silence on himself for about ten minutes. Oh, we
were so grateful. We licked his feet and hugged his knees in
ecstasy and promised to cook his dinner for him that night. Froggy
just looked scornful and went into a mong- mode sulk for a while.
Our travels had brought us back on to the main road
where we suddenly espied a cafe where we could stop and get over the
awful pain caused by not hearing Froggy sing. The cafe was called
Rincon de Pedro and Pedro was indulging in the monthly treat of
having his septic tank cleaned out. It was absolute heaven.... there
was a huge yellow tanker parked opposite us making a stink like a
Pakistani shithouse and a noise like about a thousand motorbikes all
being revved at once. But.... we at least couldn't hear Froggy
singing so we thought we'd stay here for a while despite the smell.
Lafayette was starting to have mental problems. It might
have been being caused by the constant background noise from a
variety of sources or else he was being haunted. Every so often he
would count the NERDS, wherever they were, and feel that there was
one too few. Where was the other one? Had he just gone off to get
another round? No, we were still the same number (5) as when we had
started off. Back in the Wendy House Lafayette would look around and
feel that one of the NERDS was missing. Had he just gone into the
kitchen or up to the bog? But no, everyone was there, it was a full
count; yet even so Laf was sure someone was lurking at the fringe of
wherever we were but couldn't quite make his presence known. I leave
you, dear readers, to draw your own conclusions about this. Laf just
had another drink and jammed his fingers even more tightly into his
ears. Nevertheless the impression continued.......
That day we lunched at the Casa La Mera in town. There
were no waitresses from Ukraine like in the restaurant last year –
probably all gone back to fight the Russians – but the Spanish
bloke gave good (waiter) service and we had an excellent paella while
listening to the splash, splash, splash of the large fountain next to
our table.
Froggy said he was dying of happiness at this lovely
holiday, Paco tried to see how many fags he could get through and
Lafayette kept twitching and looking over his shoulder.
After this long, long lunch which, due to form, cost
slightly more than bugger all and produced some excellent spanish red
wine, we somehow got five of us (who knows, it might have been six)
into a saloon taxi and were transported back to El Garrofer.
There we
fed the cats again and Sandyballs persisted in thinking the hole in
the centre of the table was for bouncing glasses through straight on
to the concrete floor. (Actually it was for putting the pole of a
sunshade through but SB was not convinced and continued to practise
his strange new hobby.) Froggy reckoned if you closed your eyes when
he was singing you'd think it was Eric Clapton sitting (and singing)
right next to you. We all wearily agreed that this was dead right.
Thereafter, as before, the NERDS stopped drinking, went home, brushed
their teeth and went quietly to bed. It had been a loud, strange,
spooky sort of day.
Day
3 – Barbecue Day!
Put a number of men on a desert island like Bear Grylls
has recently done for a television programme, and they will survive
even though it takes them up to eight hours to light a fire. Put five
(or six) NERDS in a Spanish villa and mention “barbecue” and they
all start getting organised to go down to the supermarket. Bugger
survival tactics; if there's a Lidl nearby we can do whatever it
takes. Lafayette realised it needed coordination for this to succeed,
namely everyone had to get up first. So he allotted tasks. BT would
drive – since he had a car; Laf would make a list of stuff , like
meat, more meat , a bit more meat oh and fire stuff like er.. fuel
and perhaps matches; oh and buns to put the meat in. What else could
you need? Perhaps a few cans of beer. No problem, sports. So off we
went.
Lafayette
was disturbed to note that BT had a hanging quazi bell in his car
that jingled every time he went round a corner and so each time this
happened he was sure he felt a cold hand placed on his shoulder.
Probably just caused by nerves at BT's driving, nothing to worry
about. In the supermarket Froggy was given the task of steering the
trolley, Laf had the list and the others went forth and scrounged.
Some funny things turned up, like Sandyballs wanted to buy all the
expensive bike equipment, Paco wanted boxes of cigars and Froggy
wanted rock music CDs. Laf. had to be very strict to keep everyone
focused but eventually the job was done and we all repaired down the
Garrofer again for an aperitif.
Anita
was there; we noticed she was expecting so all looked guiltily at one
another. She
seemed to think it was maybe her husband's fault but whoever had had
the pleasure had made her into the best pregnant Milf we had seen
for ages. A clumsy one, though, since she insisted on chucking beer
all over our table and then bending over it to clear up thus causing
a few hearts to go flutter, not to mention...oh, never mind.
Back at the ranch it was very hot and sunny so we all
picknicked on picknick stuff, drank ourselves stupid and had a little
snooze. All too full for a barbecue now, let's try and get the telly
working.
Bear Grylls would have been proud of us, it only took
about four hours, so then we watched David Attenborough walking round
somewhere foreign talking to monkeys after which we had another
little snooze.
After
snooze number 2 Sandyballs wanted to exercise his barbecue skills so
we all decided we were
a
bit hungry after all and started the burning process.
This actually
went quite well (especially after Paco had increased the amount of
charcoal) although we seemed to be eating a lot of wild boar shit
sausages (at least that's what they looked like) and incinerated
crispy things which SB told us were chicken feet. This burst of
action triggered something in SB's insides ( maybe it was a miracle,
maybe his Catholic faith had returned) but despite not having
defecated for about three days SB suddenly found he could deliver of
himself. What news! Ring the bells! Show the white smoke! This was
the high light of the afternoon so you can tell how mundane things
had got by this stage.
Day
4 – A Little Trip to the Mountains.
Todays' idea was to go up to the mountains and use some
petrol in the hire car. Because he was such a hero Froggy selflessly
said he would stay behind and do all the housework and be loud and
sing songs to annoy the neighbours (instead.) Such self sacrifice! It
meant we could have a nice quiet trip with more leg room for those
remaining, and be able to discuss matters of import such as the vexed
question of Britain's possible exit from the European Union or the
problems concerning the drains in Indonesia.
We headed towards Morella an hour's drive away.
Lafayette sat in the front to accompany Paco and make sure he stayed
awake. This he accomplished by describing in loud detail every woman
he had ever slept with and by howling boring pop songs in his ear.
Paco was somewhat startled but at least he remained awake.
Morella was still in the same place ie. up a mountain
and pretty cold.
One of the first visits was to walk past Prat's Bar
(sic) where on a previous occasion BT had mistaken a pig sandwich for
something edible and had started to sprout trotters and a curly tail.
Outside we crossed the road and entered a Bruja shop
(witchcraft).
It was full of witches on broomsticks hanging from the
ceiling, funny books containing incantations, strange scripts hanging
off the wall, funny smells and a general atmosphere of enchantment.
We all went in except BT who suddenly found he was restrained by an
invisible barrier. No matter how much he tried he was unable to enter
the shop. Puzzled by this, a flash of memory took him back to the
previous year when he had wantonly kicked aside some ugly old beggar
woman outside Prat's bar who had importuned him for alms. “ Get out
of my way, old woman.” quothed BT. “ Don't you recognise a Public
School boy when you see one? We don't give anything to beggars, we
send them back where they came from. Begone, foul hag.” The
mendicant had recoiled, then had spoken to BT in a silky voice.”
Why don't you go into that nice bar, my lovely boy, and have a bacon
sandwich; it will undoubtedly do you good.” ( cackle, cackle.) The
rest was history.
Sandyballs was feeling a bit sick (What is it about
Morella?) so we stopped at a pavement cafe for a cup of coffee. Ah,
this was better; proper coffee, no old hag beggars, and a view up and
down the interesting high street. Just then a vision of loveliness
appeared.
It was a chica floating down the street in Daz-white
tight trousers,
white high heels and a figure of such voluptuous
proportions that one or two of us spilled our coffee.
“ Don't look.
Avert your eyes!” screamed Lafayette who had been to some strange
places in his time. “ It's a witch; If you look at her you will
undoubtedly turn to stone!” Paco became immediately worried and his
hand crept towards his groin. “ I think I've started already.” he
wailed.
Fortunately, however, the fausse chica passed on by and the
atmosphere of heavy sensuality gradually dispersed.
What a narrow escape. Our thoughts then turned to Froggy
languishing by himself in Villa Rosa with no-one to listen to him,
and prey to being attacked by long range witches from Morella.
What if they got to him before our return? What if they
turned him into a mong that was dumb but just bursting to express
himself like on the beach a few days ago? Better get him some sort of
charm that he could wear round his neck to ward off evil
chicas/witches. Our quest led us to an anti-bruja shop run by a
normal catalan woman. “Have you got anything to ward off evil
influences, especially those caused by too much drinking and
self-obsession?” asked Lafayette. “I've got just the thing.”
said the anti-bruja pulling out a frog on a stick from her warm
bosom.
“This will stop anyone from being the object of evil
thoughts, evil influences and it's rumoured that it even cures
snoring.” “We'll take it!” said Laf. and made sure she wrapped
it up carefully to keep its magic powers fresh.
After a pleasant lunch at Vinatea restaurant
where we
met Tania and her identical non-sister, we went to look over the
countryside from the bella vista part of the town.
We were high up in
the sun and watching the swifts chase each other around. This was the
spot where we had seen the younger version of Philby the previous
year – but he had not returned.
BT wanted to visit Morella Castle,
which involved a lot
of climbing in the hot sun. However it was worth it as the views were
magnificent and the interior of the monastery was vast, echoing, and
pleasantly cool after the heat outside.
Paco was so impressed with
all this pre- Franco history that he fell over his own feet and
injured his hand. Lafayette put it down to the evil machinations of
the local brujas, but Sandyballs reckoned Paco was just being a
clumsy sod. (Probably a combination of the two). Lafayette drove back
as Paco was now an official invalid and the NERDS ended up at the
Garrofer for gin and tonics. Froggy was ecstatic to be given his frog
anti- witch charm bracelet-thing-on-a-stick and said he had never
once been car sick all the time we'd been away (in the car). Funny
that.
Final
Day – The NERDS split Up.
Last
day today, Sandyballs and Paco flying home from Valencia; BT taking
the other two chez lui for a week in France. Despite being an
official invalid Paco struggled manfully to deal with the rancid bed
linen and the rest of us tidied up so that his sister wouldn't think
we had been complete hooligans. Froggy spent the morning playing with
his new toy and whispering pop songs to it. Lafayette spent a lot of
time twitching, turning round suddenly and looking in odd corners for
the presence he still felt around somewhere. Should have got an
anti-paranoia charm bracelet doodah from the nice wise woman in
Morella. Sandyballs spent his final hours trying to beat his record
of having only one dump in a week; but we never got told the result
of this experiment.
And so we parted. As an example of male bonding it had
gone OK. No-one had got killed and only minor injuries had been
sustained. Nobody had lost their phone or anything more valuable
this time and the consensus was that we were all tired
and wanted to go to bed and detox. Many thanks go to Wendy and Paco
for their lending of the facilities and organisational skills
respectively. The rest of the NERDS are to be praised for their
individual life skills and other talents. (You all know which ones)
so let's be glad we all survived again, and meet up once more in
June. Lafayette is still wondering who the sixth NERD is/was. Maybe
he is yet to be born - eee, spooky.
Lafayette.
but first we had to meet S.B. at Lewes
to know where we were going.
Then the Bish started
collecting conkers until we got to a field with a couple of rams in it who were
obviously worried we had designs on their sheep until Froggy assured them in
welsh that we hadn't.
Matt, meanwhile was dancing around announcing it was “
Touch a Tit “ Day and trying to tweak everyone's nipples. ( Ah, yes, we do have
lots of fun on NERDS' rambles.) And after all this excitement we tried to cross
a small bridge into another field and got hopelessly enmeshed in brambles
(hence the name of the ramble this month)[ not to be confused with the 2009 July Bramble Ramble]. So many fantastic events we were
nearly dying of excitement by this stage.
(Our Lady of the Touchy Tits) which had a very interesting
pool infront of it where Our Lady used to drown witches whenever she got pissed
off at people trying to touch her tits. Matt thought he would chance his arm
(or finger) at this since it was his special day (T.a.T. Day) but was met at
the front door by our Lady herself who tried to lure him in with promises of
coffee and sex, and with the obvious intention of converting him into a
Protestant. Matt sensibly fled while the rest of the NERDS thought he ought to
have stayed with the sex he knew (the right handed sort) rather than mix up his
religious fantasies like this.Yes, Matt, I know, that your solicitor is
currently looking for work.
at the side of the road, (Lagos House). 'No Boko Haram girls
in there,' he reported disappointedly; 'Our Lady up the road must have drowned
them all as witches in a fit of pique.'
Not a
bad pub where we all sat outside in the pleasant garden and stuffed ourselves.
The food and drink were excellent – most of us had lamb and then pudding and
then wine and then cheese boards and then more wine until we were replete. 
Lafayette
went inside to fill up the glasses and noticed a poor, old, scrawny cat
drinking water out of a dog's bowl and bouncing off the furniture. In answer to
his enquiry, the landlord said proudly, “ We're twinned with some pub up in
Shropshire that had a strange dog who kept coming in and colliding with the
furniture, so now we've got our own Gatto Ciego who does the same. He's quite
sweet really but unfortunately the mice run rings round him. Lafayette was
impressed. 
Eventually we reached the
Rainbow at Cooksbridge where we sat in their “Secret Garden”
and drank some
more and where Froggy told us a tale about a man who had had a terrible
accident and had then had experienced multiple orgasms all day long.
Most of
the NERDS couldn't work out whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, but
at least it got rid of the boring need to talk to women and buy them presents
etc. so maybe it had its advantages .
The 16 20 failed to
stop leaving us stranded at least two miles from Lewes! 
So we just waited for
the next train (there were two an hour) and chatted and sobered up a bit – but
not too much 'cos we were enjoying ourselves.
Lafayette took to
this quite quickly but was a bit wary that its colour might unleash some sort
of magic and give him multiple orgasms for ever, especially when the young,
pretty barmaid looked at him cutely and asked him if he was pre-loading before
a big night out. “No thanks,” said Lafayette, “ Too much effort at my age; I
prefer playing bowls and polishing my airguns.” The barmaid had the grace to
look disappointed.
