Tales from my handbag

If I was a boy I would be Bear Grylls but with a slightly smaller nose. He and I share a love for going off-piste although I don’t fancy killing a dog, slicing it down the middle with my Swiss Army knife and waggling my hands around in its hot organs to keep my fingers from dropping off in the Yukon.

I wasn’t exactly in peril last weekend but I did go to Nyman’s Gardens and get a bit lost with Mr Tye the DIY. It started innocently enough; we admired a few big trees, I took pictures of wild garlic and Mr Tye, still in recovery from last night’s bean stew, let rip with some industrial strength trumps. Then I suggested we add a bit of spice into our ramble by leaving the track and striking off into a bush. Naturally, my big hair got caught up in some very angry brambles and I ripped the back of my jeans while hurdling a barbed wire fence. Following this, tempted by a plantation of giant cabbages. I tried to vault a stream but tripped, skidded through the mud and  slid into the water. That’s when it got a bit Deliverance. Somehow, we’d wandered into some sort of game reserve complete with makeshift dens, tree viewing platforms, electric fences and men in black with guns. Tye, fearful of having his dark interior plundered by man flesh, quivered behind a tree. I took the hysterical route. Anyway, the upshot was, we were ‘rescued’ by two Chinese photographers who put us on the right track back to the grounds of the house where a couple called Richard and Alison were celebrating their wedding with a bouncy castle and the Buena Vista Social Club.

The next day, I went to a tango class in the Pavilion Gardens with a load of middle aged women and a teacher called Kirsty who had enormous knockers and very thin legs. There were way too many of us for the size of the tent plus there was a ruddy great sofa in the middle which meant we had to mince around in a circle to avoid treading on each other or falling over the furnishings. As per, I was playing the man but then, after we’d learnt a basic promenade, I got flung up against the real article, a midget of a man called Darren who had to take a very firm grip of me to stop me whizzing him off. The idea in tango is to lean in with your head at an angle while keeping your body away from your partner – easy if you’re both the same height but if you’re dancing with a circus freak, you’re prone to toppling. Next up was ‘Miguel’ who told me he was Brazilian but then his accent slipped and he turned out to be Michael from Portslade. Michael had the misfortune of clammy hands and an excess of saliva. Needless to say, I didn’t lock heads with him for fear of an invasion of his oral fluids.

It’s festival time in Brighton which means a whole lot of showing off, and drawing attention to oneself. These are not necessarily the same thing. For example, when I went to see the Gay Men’s Chorus in a church the other night, the highlight  wasn’t ‘I am what I am’ but all the traffic to the vestry toilet. God knows what was going on in there but it was a big crowd pleaser; indeed, one Oriental ‘lady’ (this being the month of the Lady Boy, one never knows for sure) tottered along three times in her high heels – never once trying to muffle her clacking, even during the tender yet miserable rendition of Michael Buble’s ‘Home’. Talking of disrespectful audiences, last night, I went to see some modern dance at the Dome.  First of all, we were confronted by a small pocket of Pro-Palestinian supporters outside who were protesting at the Israeli fiddlers playing in the Corn Exchange. Then, we were just settling down to some plinky plonky legs akimbo, decidedly non-Nijinsky moves when a family of four featuring a topless 10 year old boy – slumped down behind us and proceeded to chew, burp and slurp their way through the performance while simultaneously smelling of wee. After a sort of avant garde Gay Gordons where the dancers kept launching themselves, foetal-like off each other’s thighs, our aromatically challenged neighbours were moved to the back of the auditorium where they could reek and rustle to their heart’s content. Then, during a totally silent piece, someone’s mobile went off and four people stomped out. We later found out that there’d been a bit of a rumpus in the Jerusalem Quartet involving the same shouty people we’d seen at the entrance. Some old people in the audience cried while others tried to wrestle the protesters to the ground. And all the while, like the Titanic, the band played on. Talking of live performance, I went for a walk on the normally peaceful South Downs the other night and, on returning to Ditchling Beacon car park, found a man standing by his open-doored camper van playing a saxophone willy nilly. OK, so he wanted to share his jazz warbling with us but we didn’t need the bloody Hammond organ backing track. I mean, there’s a time and place. Talking of which, half naked man over the road has recently taken to going the whole hog and removing his underpants around tea-time and standing, quite casually, hands on hip at his front window. I did wonder if his was an Open House and he was doing a bit of performance art but then the police came and took him away so maybe not.

Last weekend we embarked on our South Downs Way odyssey – an epic journey full of emotion, bad map reading and Germolene emergencies. I was a little late owing to a wrong turn in Petworth and the fact that, having been on a speed awareness course last week, I was driving like Miss Marple. Oh yeah, and with no Tom Tom in my car, I was relying on my ‘it’s somewhere around here’ cavalier style of map-reading and the kindness of strangers to locate our rendez-vous, a tiny village called Buriton that was in the arse-end of nowhere. So, an hour late, we all piled into one car and whizzed over Winchester way to another small village which was notable for its fine cottage architecture and a depressed horse. There was a slight delay in starting as my two companions had a struggle to get their poles the right length. Then we lost the dog, who decided she didn’t want to walk 12 miles on her short hairy legs and preferred to run pell-mell up into a stranger’s bedroom. We eventually extricated her by waving a sliver of Tesco’s Finest pressed pork under the bedroom window. And then we were off….Our morning passed pleasingly enough as we traversed along the fine chalky pathways among gently undulating hills although Jeremy (not his real name) began to feel an itch in his general Tomasz Schafanaker region which warranted a bit of pant realignment. After lunch, we were a little disconcerted to find the South Downs Way took us along a very busy A road with very little verge. Brad (not his real name) had the dog on a lead but we were continually being thrust into the hedge by thundering jugganauts and one very aggressive driver even slowed down to say ‘get your fackin’ dog off the road’. We very soon realised that we’d read the map upside down and so had to make a detour through some primrose-festooned woods and up another chalk escarpment to pick up the trail again.  By this time, Jeremy’s chafing had escalated and he had to duck off behind some farmyard machinery to apply a slather of Germolene. I took the opportunity to wet my lettuce and only then, did I realise we’d stumbled upon a bunch of paragliders on the other side of the hedge which meant both Jeremy and I had an aerial audience for our arse flashings. That night, having walked 12 miles, we stayed in a pub and ate some pork which, it turned out came from one of Brad’s pigs. Strangely enough, the only other diners in the pub that night were some pudding suppliers from Swanage, two quite rotund individuals who gave us a long lecture about the quality of their Rum Babas. Continuing on a porcine theme, after dinner, we settled down to a game of ‘pass the pigs’ while Jeremy read us a couple of chapters of ‘The adventures of chunky’, courtesy of the pub bookshelf. And so to bed… The following day, we had more mileage and more climbing but the sun shone brilliantly and, thankfully, the Germolene had worked its magic so Jeremy was able to stride out with new-found confidence – although Brad’s dicky knee began playing up. All went well; we had lunch on Butser Hill with some very shouty, bare-chested men, and then we got lost again – this time in Queen Elizabeth Park, right by the A3. We’d taken a detour off the track to visit a cafe in a car park  but sadly, the cups of PG and slices of drizzle cake we’d anticipated were a no-show owing to the cafe being closed. We had to make do with my thermos flask of tea (which tasted of coffee) and one Rocky Road biscuit between us and the dog (who had run out of his pooch pellets). However, this did sustain us through the next hour’s twists and turns as we tried to navigate our way out of the woods and back to Buriton and the end of leg one. On the way home, I threw Miss Marple out of the window and assumed my usual Jeremy Clarkson demeanour.  Sometimes speed is of the essence.

We all need a mini-break from time to time so when Friend X suggested we get away from this crazy world we call life, I jumped at the chance. We slung a toothbrush and a couple of pairs of pants into a bag and headed off to deepest, darkest West Sussex – Cocking to be precise. En route to our weekend idyll, we passed by Cowdray Castle where there were bikes for hire. ‘Let’s go on a bicycle adventure’ I gleefully suggested to Friend X, who, it had to be said, was ill-prepared for anything rustic and was wearing furry snowboots and a Prada poncho. Ooh, it was a mucky ride, taking us alongside gurgling streams and through woods festooned with carpets of leaves and oceans of black, treacley mud which kept flicking into our face and hair. We also got gobfulls of the local insect life as we thundered, legs and mouths akimbo, down the narrow country lanes. 20 minutes into our ride at a crossroads, we suddenly came upon a cluster of be-wellingtoned men casually leaning against their 4x4s gazing expectantly at the field opposite. Friend X had swallowed a bluebottle and was choking to death so we had to stop and while I was doing the Heimlich manoeuvre, I took the opportunity to ask a man with a big nose what he was doing there. Turns out they’d come to watch the hunt. Somehow, very quickly, the conversation turned to gay sex. Our Nigel Havers look-alike was both a complete homophobe; ‘well, it’s not bloody natural is it?’ and a misogynist; ‘no, I’m not married – done it twice but it takes too long to break them in and too much dosh to get rid of them’. We sympathised in a patronising manner and cycled off again only to get completely bloody lost. By now, Friend X was complaining of shooting pains in her buttocks so I suggested we ignore all KEEP OUT, PRIVATE signs and cut across country. This involved much throwing of bikes over hedges and hiding behind trees lest we get shouted at by men in tweed. We even ran into Nigel Havers again; ‘hello you two old bags’ he gaily called out as we wizzed by him walking up a huge gravel drive to a house that Friend X said had featured in Atonement. His casual insult put me in mind of the time me and a friend ran naked around a croquet lawn at a wedding, only to find out later we’d been spied by two estate workers who referred to us as ‘screechy and scrawny’. Anyway, eventually, as the fag end of day was stubbing itself out, we arrived dirty and a bit puffed back at the cycle shop. The next day, we decided to go on a ramble to Fittingworth Wood. Here, we ran into the local ramblers, a septogenarian group of mostly men who circled us like thirsty vampires. They were very keen to get us onboard as members (a snip at only £4 a year, although that didn’t include rambling holidays, one wrinkly old man with no front teeth was keen to point out). Did we want to join them on their 10 miler? Friend X didn’t think her buttocks were up to it so we politely declined then proceeded to get lost yet again. As we were trying to work out how to get out of the wood, we ran into a nob on a horse who, I fear, thought he was in an episode of Robin Hood. ‘Hop on Maid Marion’, he cheerily cried, flicking his switch at me. Rural folk are not my milieu, I officially now concur.

Last weekend I had a sock incident in the Brecon Beacons. I was staying in Ponty Pandy’s only public house complete with bunkhouse attachment, stale nibbles and porcine landlord with pudding basin hair. Now I love a ramble, involving, as it usually does, a leisurely pace, a hot beverage with a Pppppppenguin and, if I’m lucky a wee in a bush.  However, this ramble was a 20 mile Challenge in the company of a bunch of seriously dull council employees. We had a trading standards officer, a couple of widget counters and a man who did something in leisure centres – think Gordon Brittas in waterproof trousers. The day didn’t get off to a good start – the pub had no muesli, no stewed prunes, not even any Rice Crispies. It was a Welsh-all-in or nothing, so I had a slaver of black pudding on a slice of 5050 (that’s brown bread that’s been bleached white but doesn’t taste of either) then it was check you’ve got your whistle, your survival bag and your sandwiches – more slices of pig on 5050 – and we were off. From one rain-sodden tussock to another we leapt whereupon I discovered my waterproof boots weren’t waterproof at all. We then chucked up the hugely steep and perilous Pen Y Fan. En route, we passed a woman with a handbag and a shawl, and, most peculiarly, a man with strange rubber shoes with individual toes in them who’d lost the plastic end of his walking pole and had walked all the way down to the bottom to find it, saving himself, oh I’d say about 50p. Meanwhile, the council boys, fuelled by their morning sausage, had chased each other to the top and were now eating bananas and laughing like drains at the impossibly named adjacent peak of Fan Y Big. The view was lovely but on the way down, my ultra chunky wet socks started to chafe and friend A got the urge to wee. With no bushes in sight, we could either form a human shield around her with the council bores, or she could hold it until the next check point (whose facilities turned out to be a bucket in the school stationery cupboard). By this time, we’d hooked up with a Scottish Munro bagger and a building inspector from Neath who for the next two hours, regaled us with tales of altitude sickness on Kilimanjaro. By tea time, our ordeal was over. Back at the bunkhouse, we fought over the shower and who was going to have the Welsh faggots – and then we went to bed. Tidy.

I’ve had a very green and rambly weekend. On Saturday, me and friend X did an 8 miler around Devil’s Dyke culminating in a cup of tea in a ponsified barn. The man at the kiosk, after fleecing us £3 for a small piece of gloop-topped cake with scratchings of old sawdust in it, told us that the Knights Templar used to live at the nearby farm and that we really shouldn’t leave without taking a gander at their donkey wheel. We took his advice but, like the cake, we got little pleasure from the experience. However, the next day’s ramble was full of thrills. By the River Ouse, which friend X found very unsatisfactory, as far as waterways go, owing to it being tidal and not looking like Wind in the Willows, we met a man with two-tone shoes and a wife who was like the human equivalent of a dalmation, blotchy. Being so close to where Virginia Woolf had finally succeeded in killing herself, we had a long conversation about what she was wearing when she died. Two-tone man said she had a jumper on whereas I felt confident that it would have been more a comfy cardigan. Whatever, she must have had very big pockets to accommodate the size of stone necessary to drag her thin, Bloomsbury body down into the depths. Friend X thought maybe, having spent most of her life moping about in dusty drawing rooms with bi/tri/pan sexual deviants, she wouldn’t have had the time to learn to swim, so that would help speed up the drowning process. After that, we came across some very noisy lady frogs in the bullrushes who, as relayed to me by a passing geriatric jogger, were gagging for frog cock so were trying to out croak each other. Further on, we passed through a very smelly farm which friend X, thought was dirtier than it should have been and had a queer atmosphere. Her feelings of discombobulation were compounded when she saw a field of crucified crows, wings-akimbo like Jesus and those other naughty boys. What fun!

Yesterday, I woke up with a blocked nose hole but I reckoned, if I was careful, I could survive the day’s breathing on one nostril only. I have to stress, this was a gay rambling day, guaranteed to be a titter and a half, so, I donned my cagoule and chunky socks, dropped a Cox into my pocket and whizzed down to the station to meet the gang. The walk, just outside Haywards Heath, was sublime: we marvelled at a huge viaduct, oooed and aaaahed at the pretty snowdrops and laughed ’til we felt sick, when one of our party slipped on his arse in a claggy field. By lunchtime, I was Coxless and desperate for food but what was this, on arrival at our pre-arranged pub pitstop, we were met by three members of the Russian mafia; one was as wide as he was tall, another was the spit of Doctor Zhivago and all three had hair coming out of their nostrils and their ears. Luckily, after a quick frisk, we were allowed in – but only because we’d booked a table. Post-lunch, regretting our orgy of Vimto and chunky chips, we plodded the last mile or so back to the station, where, inspired by the mist and a man with a whistle, I came over all Jenny Agutter and started running up the platform, crying ‘daddy, my daddy’. Unfortunately, before I could get the second ‘daddy’ out, I’d fallen over a small dog and lay bleeding, my right leg ripped to shreds – yet again. Bang goes that knee modelling assignment.

Summer means camping and camping is great fun, provided you like eating burnt things and don’t mind having a constant dribble of urine down your leg from badly executed al fresco weeing. A friend has very kindly given me her two-man pop-up tent. I have a practice pop-up in my back garden but am sadly unable to pop-down, despite stage by stage instructions. This is Crystal Maze but without the skipping baldie in the Bet Lynch overcoat. After rolling around the garden for an hour or so, and a few useless tips from my window cleaner, who’s popped by to have a dump, I give up. Later on, with the help of a man friend, I manage to coax the pesky thing back into its bag. What I fail to notice until I’ve pitched my tent at the campsite, is that despite this being a two man tent, I seem to take up most of its sparse interior. Plus, I have to sleep diagonally otherwise my feet hang outside. The night is long: three wees, one bad dream (I’m Charles Bronson, struggling to tunnel his way to freedom with only the help of an emery board), a screaming baby and a man with loud, extended wind in the next tent.  And then it’s time to get up. Dave, the campsite owner, who tells me he’s spent his night at a very relaxing orgy involving a pond and a bag of grapes, suggests I get a bigger tent. Oh God, have I really got to go to Millets again?

Yesterday, I learnt a lot about stag beetles; they can grow to up to 3″ and like to hang out in rotten tree stumps. I know this because I was on a ramble in the Blue Peter garden; ok, that’s a lie, I was in a nature reserve in Surrey but it felt distinctly Blue Petery – it was small and tidy with lots of little paths and homemade signs and cheery folk in big jumpers and wellington boots, weaving homemade fences and carrying heavy logs around. They were way too happy. I was hoping someone would drop a heavy log on someone else’s foot and then there’d be a fight and someone would  stab someone in the eye with a freshly whittled stick or at least put dog dirt down someone’s fleece. Sadly, it didn’t happen. What did happen was that Katrina and I got lost. Round and round in circles we went looking for the way out but nature can be very samey. So we followed some people with a big bag of poo thinking they might be on their way back to the car park but their dog evidently had a bowel problem because the bag just got bigger and bigger and we got more lost. Whilst I was fully prepared to fashion a sleeping bag from a bush and kill a rabbit with my bare teeth I was rather pleased when our inner compass kicked in and we found our way out via the stag beetle enclave. I want the Blue Peter badge for Endurance. �