Wierdos of Telemark and other stories

I used to work in Chicago
An old department store
I used to work in Chicago
I dont work there no more

A woman came in for a handle
A Handle from the store
Handle she wanted
Knob she got
I dont work there no more
Aaaagh!

I used to...

sailors/semen
ewe/rammed
paxo/stuffing
hat/helmet
kitkat/4 fingers
width/length
ruler/12 inches
herbert/rodgerd
richard/dick
hen/cock
finish/end
exit/entered
terra ingonita/explored
spoonbill/stalked
northern trunk road/A69
translation and interpreting/cunnilingus
batholith/intrusion
Battle of Hastings/invaded
Dentist/Filling
Eggs/Laid
Nitrates/Fertilsed
Pin/Prick
Voyager2/probe
Ding/dong
Book keeping/double entry
Beef joint/spit roast
Bacon/porking
TVP/meat
Margarine/spread
I can belive its nor butter/delight
Cocaine/ecstasy
boom/banged
drift mine/shafting
nail/screwed
hammer/nailed
honk/bonked
Starling/Thrush
Dialing code/STD
emu/rod
czech/pole
stampcollection/lickin'
cormorant/shag
tiptop/cream
blue whale/sperm
lard/man fat
applause/the clap
debenture/member
branch/root
William/willy
pass/tackle
MOT/serviced
gear/equipment
spoon/forked
velvet/felt
Aplha Course/intercourse
half a foot/6 inches
Cap'n Birdseye/Fishy Fingers
axe/chopper
William/willy
Traffic Calming Measure/humping
BigMac/Whopper
Donkey/Dobbin
hacksaw/tool
fork/prong
nikwax/impregnated

silver bath/golden shower*
Back door/rear entry **
Diamond earrings/pearl necklace **
single explosion/gang bang **

* from Rob ** from HD

2 hours sleep, the airbed is virtualy deflated, the front room stinks of sweaty snoring bodies and stale beer, I'm out in the kitchen meeting the Stfford folk and trying to work out if they have a problem with us overloading the hut. It looks like good weather outside, so I make tea to try and raise the hut. Popular-ish idea in some quarters, not so in the majority!

Eventally, the usual eon of faffing happens but we do in fact set out on a walk. The Uberfeller being young and keen have decided to go and do Cader Idris. Vicky, Steve, Daly et al not being as young but still being as keen have driven towards Bala Lake and are going to walk back to teh hut along the Aran mountain ridge... Me, Pugs, the Dollytwins, Dollytwinsmate Fiona, Richard, Sophie and bloke are walking up past brown pants gully to the boggy plateau behind. The weather was good when we started but soon turns to sleet and a strong wind. Richard has holy boots and an epiphany. He heads back down the gully to do emergency food shopping and the rest off us head into the whiteout. The ground is dead boggy but the snow covers most of the deadly patches so it's like crossing a minefield of sudden death swamps. Everyone falls in at some point. I've got a 1:50 type map which doesnt have the fence marked alonside which I know has a duckboard path. It's hard naigating without a watch as well as avoiding a swampy dunking but we find the fence as well as Duncan and Karen who have set off earlier but seem to be having the same snow fun time experiences.

We get somewhere about 50 meters from the trig point on Aran Fawdwyy find a cairn, pretend it's teh top and hightail it back down into the lee, which is hard to find since the wind has changed direction and still seems to be in our faces. Funny, that innit! Always seems to happen. In the gathering gloom, I tell Meli a joke about a cliff and the shadows. Hmm, it wasnt funny then and it isnt now!

Eventually we are back in the hut, drinking tea and warming up. The others tun up, weather beaten and happy. I try to organise a gang of choppers as tonight is veggie stir-fry and sheery triffle night

Starter
A selction of finest left-over Walkabout Scotland summer season crisps

Main course
Ginger and garlic vegetable stir-fry with noodles
Stir-fry vegetables in black bean and soy sauce
Chilli and Leek Fiery Welsh Dragon

served with chips a single slice of tomato and special boiled rice

Desert
Pint of Sherry Triffle

Posh cheese, tea coffee, more sherry, port and beer

Evening entertainment consisted of a fine 80 verse rendition of Old Chicago Town, follwed by Sunshine Mountain, Ilkley Moor bah'tat, Yogi Bear, Shag a Wallaby and Singing in the Rain and followed by a long and very dance-able set by DJ DM on the dodgy Lulu kitchen cd player - even the Stafford MC crew joined in... and at by the end they were outnumbering Droopers (the Uberfellers being down to just Adele)...

At this point the spare bottle of sherry kicked in and the evenings events beacme a little hazy (details spared to save the innocent and teh not so innocent)

Sunday, was a little hazy too... Al and Duncan managed to be Droopers up a hill the rest of us sat around, slowly tidying up, drinking cupos of tea, making more chips and talking about but not going to the beach

An ace and truly inspiring trip!

Just a couple of hours from Telford, hidden in a secret Welsh valley and tucked under an enourmous crag between two muntain streams lies Bryn Hafod...site of some classic parties over the years and seemlingly never to dissappiont

Pugs and I are trudging up the track after carefully parking the car on the bog so not to antagonise the sons of Glendower and the local farmers.. I've got a heavy rucksac containing most of the food as well as Pug's bag since he is fighting with a binbag containg two airbeds...

The light of the hut becons us onwards but we dont seem to be getting there quickly but soon after almost slipping off the rickety and icy bridge we're in the front room looking for the fisher price space shuttle and Mike and Lulu are dead surprised to see Pugs who has rapidly taken over as chief entertainer

It's a huge trip, 20 Droopers, 10 Uberfellers, and 8 Staford MC people who are up to do some repairs on the hut. We're supposed to be 18 and I'm worried about getting us banned. After 13 hours of travelling, Pugs and I are not miraculously the last. Richard is turning up later with the London Love Bus.

When the London crowd do stagger at 1.30am, mayhem breaks loose. The intelligent people run to their beds, the rest of us start drinking. The fire is gloriously warm, the beer thirst is deadly and the conversation gets sillier.

At 4am, we're playing a game of as-soon-as-there's-five-people-left-we-can-all-go-to-sleep (3 sofas, 2 airbeds). Pugs soon blows up his airbed to full rigidity. Mine is limp and hopeless despite an enternity of blowing. Meli is the one to lose the stand off and head up stairs to the cold bedroom. Mike, Lulu and Steve are on the sofas, Pugs is on his rock hard airbed and mine is floppy. In the glow of the firelight, you can hear the wind blow outside and a steady and slight hiss... I'm getting floppier.

"If you were a wild animal, what would you be?" says Pugs, to the room
"I'd be a snow fox", I mutter
"I'd be a tiger" says Steve
"I'd be a raven" says Pugs
"What would you be, Mike?" I give him a quick prod, he dribbles
"I'm a hyena!" Lulu decares from the far corner

45 minutes and many varieties of object later...

"If you were a method of suicide what would you be?" asks Pugs..
"I'd be chased off Beachy Head by hordes of naked women" says Steve, quietly hoping that we wouldnt notice the monty python plagerism and possibly we might even shut up and go to sleep...
"I'm a hyena!" says Lulu, loudly

"Hissssssss" the air bed whimpers...

Friday's weather... severe snow storms throughout the western UK and upland areas...police advice only to travel if essential...

I cant travel to Bryn Hafod can I? I will have to send an email out, get someone else to do the food shopping and arrange to see Pugs another year..

Do I;
1. stay at home and watch the All Blacks beat Scotland on telly?
2. ammass a further 30 panzer divisions, the entire Golden Horde and the fleet of Gustav Adolfus, stick the Wagner CD on and embark on another invasion of Poland...

I decide on plan 2. but just as the first storm troopers are doing a quick explaratory raid across the River Oder..I get the "Lets Just Be Friends" speech...

"Ach mein liebe Gott!" I cry in my best tank commanders accent as the Tiger tank runs out of unleaded, the Golden Horde pulls up lame at the first and the good ship Vasa keels over in Stockholm harbour after some fuckwit leaves the bottom gunports open.

Change of plan... get my best green furry love troozas and long woolen undies out of summer storage, grab the menagerie of spare boots, hats, gloves, ski goggles, snowspade, find the car keys at the bottom of the dirty washing pile and head out at midday...

2 hours later and I've hit the first traffic jam to the north of Biggar...the Pentland Hills are covered in, all of 10cms of the glorious white stuff and a couple of trucks are stuck on tehphill sections... In Norway, it takes something like an avalanche or landslide to cause a 5 mile tailback but in Scotland it takes 10cms of snow. Down there south of Hadrians wall it takes a lot less than 10 centimeters! Nobody really knows how to drive in snow here, but c'est la vie!

2.5 hours later a tractor pulls one of the trucks off the road and the traffic flows slowy....

3. hours and a daft woman in a 4x4 does athree point turnifron of a truck moving up teh hill near Coulter... another jam, this time big anough to get a mention on Steve Wright. There's a 30 mile jam doen in Cornwall! I've got to be bloody mad to be heading for a Drooper trip!

At 5pm, I eventually hit the motorway and I'm suffering longjourney with only one tape madness! It's not even ABBA which is making it worse.

By 9pm, I'm navigating Telfords well signposted maze of roundabouts looking for Pugs...

A madweekend awaits...

Ahoi there! me hearties, put down ye jugs o' ale and come an listen to me tale...or ye'll be 'avin a cat o' nine tails flayin' ye skin from ye bones!

How Long John Silver Lost His Parrot....aaaargh!
For many a year after Long John came back from them south seas, missin' 'is leg and gainin' 'is parrot, he tooks tae wanderin' the taverns an' alehouses of tamworth shore. 'e could tell a good tale, could old Long John, what with that demented parrot and that peg leg bangin' on alehouse floor an' that gleam in 'is good eye looking at the servin' wenches. Aaaargh!

Sometimes, loike when the hoo-erhouse was busy, Old Mate Cap'n Hook would come in and get Long John's parrot tae pick 'is nose, loike, Cap'n hook not being inclined tae such manouvres loike and it was one of thse times when Long John's parrot was helping the Cap'n with his nasal excavations that the evil man from the ministry came and took the bird away, siting failure to comply with import of exotic birds act 1977.

Blackbeard, Bluebeard an' Redbeard grabbed their cutlasses an' chased the snivellin' scumbag down tae canal an' keelhauled 'im but alas the bird wasne'er ta'be see in these parts again. Aaaargh!

Long John was scuttled with sadness and foundered on the wretched reef of despair. Well shiver me timbers! He even took tae long bouts of sobriety and sexual abstinence.

Many years past an' Old Long John was destitute loike, 'im being an old one legged pirate without a parrot and only one good eye and he took to standing outside IKEA looking lustfully at flatpack tables and daydreaming of south sea islands and the luscious smell of melons on the wind...aaargh!

Just when it looked loike Ol' Long John would end his sorry days in a shopping mall tavern, he was picked up by Stoke City and put to work as 1st Team Striker. He spent his waning days, hobblin' around the penalty area and was known to bellow (upon the very prescious and rare near scoring chance) "Thre'll be treasure in them there hills... and You'll better be on the Drooper Xmas Pirate Party to find it....aaaaargh

Managed to get down to the Howgills despite having received a Friday night work shocker and having to leg it up North on Saturday...
Another well attended trip - gorgeous place the Howgills, shame that I didnt somehow manage to get up the hills or lay my eyes on Cautley Spout, the highest waterfall in England. Maybe it was the drinking or the humiliation of spending 45 minutes trying to do "Convoy" at charades...

However, I did manage a run from the front door on Sunday morning complete with arseplant at aforementioned front door and getting completely covered in shite...

After an enternity of faffing, we did manage a bit of a wendy ramble... 12km of traipsing around muddy fields of guwno (Polski for cowshit) and getting moaned at by landowners, we all mangaged a bit of a pig out in the Sadborough cafe... I could get used to being a lazy wendywalking fat bstrd (NEWSFLASH! you already are!)

Compared to last year's debacle on the A class, we were better prepared, better trained (at least this time we had done some), better kitted out (I had even bought myself some supposed hill running shoes from Tiso's) but...
we dropped out (again!)

The rain was an absolute monsoon... we didn't help ourselves by pitching our base camp tent on the Friday night in the muddiest spot in Cumbria but we sort of managed. Being only 111 meters from the beer tent helped. We thought we had an advantage having a late tsrt time (10.15), allowing us a relaxed start to the day and plenty of time for Mike to wet himself after his platypus bag leaked. Having exchanged a few pleasantries with monsieur Baguette (remember Waterloo, Agincourt, the usual stuff!), the almost dry Dr Mike and I set off into a howling gale...just in time for me to realise that the compass I had was broken...

We staggered along for the next few hours, managing to run some sections, although most of the flat bits seemed to be into a headwind. On the steep downhill sections, it soon became apparent that the shoes sold to me by Tiso's were definitely not suitable... I was much to cautious much to Dr downhill-runner-Simpson's consternation. We didnt get lost this year though which was a good thing...just that the kilometers didnt seem to to be eaten up fast enough.

After finding out that we had reached base five 15 minutes later than the cut-off time, it started to dawn on us that we would be having problems getting to the overnight camp on time.
By 3pm, this sad fact was pretty obvious especially as a stream of defeated B classers limped, staggered and rolled down the hill in the opposite direction. So after being blown off our feet a few hundred times, we decided to call it a day and for the second year running, Mike and I camped out and had to make our way back to the finish on the Sunday morning - after spending the night in the tent eating boil in the bag msg with added sauerkraut and alleged bacon bits.

Heading back over High Street, we were faced with hail, a severe gale and glimpses of other KIMM runners staggering around. It was more useful to use the map as a face mask than as a orientation guide so when we found the lee of a stonewall, it took a few moments of sheepish map reading to work out that we were about to run down the wrong hill.

Back into the gale and hail, it was another hour or so that we yomped back to the finish, which Mike passed in a slightly drier state than 26 hours previously, having slipped 100m from the end and landed in a small pond having deposited a couple of fellow runners there on the way.

Ace weekend! Ace event! C class next year?

Most of clan McDrooper piled down to Edale with monsieur Eglise in September...one of the best attended trips for ages. It was a cold on Friday night although the nitrogen content of the air was still in a gaseous form so it wasn't that cold. Nothing that a few beers, mindless campsite-distrurbing chatter and a few rounds of burping and farting couldn't handle.

Dr Simpson turned up Saturday morning, we headed off for more KIMM training...managing the heroic distance of 21km in 4 hours.... otherwise known as walking pace so it wasn't that promissing. DM ran back to the campsite but I bailed out at Lawrenfiled crag so I could attempt to get my lardarse up a few VDiffs and amuse Eglise et Al in the process.

The pub session at Edale on Saturday night was most excellent, Droopers managing to drink the pub out of ales...probably due to shoddy stock taking more than superhuman liver stress by us but it still left us resorting to alco-pops!

Sunday was much of the same, DM and I managing a sweaty jog over Mam Tor, Eglise, Al, Mo and Jenny bailing the day's climbs due to sudden shower syndrome and Roystar improving his cunning polish language skills in the start of Pennine way cafe

The Northhumberland Drooper trip at the August Bank Holiday was notable for a few reasons:
1. small turn out (Anna, Cath, Claire, Steve, DM, MJ)
2. Steve and the girlies getting lost in the Cheviots despite having a GPS
3. DM and MJ starting training for the KIMM race
4. MJ's lardy man boob injury

The Scottish freeheel skiing season is yet to start though hopefully the onset of global warming will abate a while and leave us with a few awesome days in the hills in the months to come...
Meanwhile, there's some Drooper trips to do!