Farmyard Frolics - Long
I've mentioned before that I used to occasionally work on a farm in the summer, so here's a tale from those days.


An incident springs to mind and that was the night of the cider run. So this is how it happened.......

After a hard few weeks in the fields, Roger the farm manager decided to take a bunch of us out in a couple of mini buses to a town a few miles away that had a cider-house. It was a kind of pub but it only sold cider in two-pint stone flagons. Well I say cider, it was really a kind of lethal scrumpy which I'm sure couldn't have been legal.

When we got there, we grabbed a couple of tables - big old-fashioned solid oak jobbies the were which could seat about 12 people. We grabbed seats and settled in for a night of drinking and silliness. Roger had already warned us not to have more than two flagons as "It be straaanger than it looks". Heh.. What did he know? I was a Geordie and was proud of my drinking capacity. 10 plus pints a night wasn't unknown in those days. (Jesus. If I tried that now I'd be in bed for a week!) And so we bought our flagons and started drinking.

It tasted a little odd "That'll be the dead rats they throw in to give it some body" cracked Roger and I wasn't entirely sure he was joking. Still, it went down and stayed down and I was soon on my way for my second flagon. That one went down without problems as well. It was also having the usual effect of making the conversation sparkle and anything anyone said was funny. 2 flagons down and I still felt fine so it was soon off for my third. After finishing that I felt marvelous. On top of the world. A tiny, tiny bit tipsy but nothing much. So I decided to get myself another one. After all, what did a farmer know about drinking? So I started to stand up and......

My knees didn't work. Halfway through standing up they just gave way and my face came down with a horrible bang straight into the solid oak table. My nose took the brunt of the impact and there was claret (blood) everywhere. Of course, everyone (including me) found this hilarious. After cleaning myself up I did finally get my fourth jug of cider and then everything became a blur. I've no memory at all of leaving the cider-house, the journey home or why I was waking up in the wood-pile back at the campsite.

No work got done that day. At least not by any of us who'd been to the cider-house. Most of the day was spent drinking vast quantities of water and trying to hide from the sun. Still, by the evening I was feeling almost human again so it was off to the local pub for a very quiet nights drinking. When we arrived, Roger (who hadn’t been drinking the night before as he was driving) filled us in on what had happened when we got back to the camp-site.

"It was like a bomb exploding" he said "Every door in the bus opened - including some sill bugger who managed to crawl out of the roof - and you all just wandered off in totally random directions. Jeff fell in the cess-pit, Sue and Chris were being sick in the cornfield and Legless was trying to make a nest in the woodpile. I did watch for 10 minutes or so to make sure nobody hurt themselves and I did pull Jeff out of the shit but I was most interested in watching Craig trying to find the door at the back of his tent....."

As a footnote to this tale, something amusing happened the following week when instead of going to the pub we sent a car over to the cider house to get a couple of gallons of cider which we intended to drink around the campfire. That week, there was a load of Moroccans guys over who were strict Muslims. As we were drinking, playing guitar and singing around the fires, a couple came over to chat to us.

(I can't do accents even when I'm writing so bear with me...)

"Wos is zat you are drinking" says a Moroccan?

"Apple juice mate. Just Apple juice" I said.

"Oh - can we try some?" says Moroccan.

And in the interests of International brotherhood I said

"Course you can mate. And here's some for your pals" and slung a gallon container over to him.

Well how was I to know that Moslems didn't drink? There were bugger all Moslems where I came from. So the silly buggers had about half a pint each and they were away with the fairies. It was fucking Bedlam. A couple of fights started, three of them were trying to climb one of the greenhouses but the funniest were a group who decided that they were going to try and shag Paddy.

Paddy was a young, good-looking Irish lad (Never!!) with bright blonde hair and the Moroccans were fascinated with him. They pursued him around the field, babbling away in French about what they wanted to do to him and eventually he holed up in his tent. Even there he wasn't safe. About 5 of them were clustered around the door to his tent and were trying to persuade him to open the door.

"Legless" yelled Paddy - "Legless!! - You speak some frog. What's French for fuck off?"

"Err. That would be Je t'aime mate. Try that" I said trying to get the words out through my laughter.

"Je t'aime you bastards, je t'aime!!!" screamed Paddy and the Moroccans redoubled their efforts to get into his tent....

He never did forgive me, and I've always felt a wee bit guilty about it...

Cheers all
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 3 Sep 2007, 14:05, Reply)