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Codric's 1999 Summer Sojourn

   Bars and Bears in the Berkshires

Staying in the Berkshires, with our old chum slanche@aol.com prior to the Cape Cod sojourn I discover that a 360lb bear is on the loose. The local police, better known for marksmanship than intellect are in hot pursuit. So far the only apprehension has been of a world famous and extremely avaricious tenor currently performing at nearby Tanglewood. It transpires that the only previous ursine experience of the gendarmerie had been of bears attached to the local circus and usually clad in white tie and tails. Compounding the embarrassing mistake and misinterpreting an ambiguous order from above, the unfortunate law enforcers disrobed the tenor and released him into the wild, further complicating the chase. Moreover Slanche's good lady informs me that she saw the bear last night rooting through her dustbins, but thinking it was the tenor she set the dogs on him driving him back into the woods. Meanwhile audiences at Tanglewood are agog, particularly since the disappearance of the tenor's reserve set of evening dress. One feels that it is but one short step in a bear's life from desperate fugitive to the darling of the culture crowd.

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   A Frightening Encounter on the Cape

While seeking solace among the well-heeled summer denizens of Cape Cod, I was inveigled by my hosts to enter a local hostelry by the name of The Squires of Chatham. On passing through the portal I was confronted by a rowdy mob of eccentrically attired and undoubtedly intoxicated persons. From their alarming demeanour I naturally assumed them to be off-duty pirates or wreckers celebrating the salvage of some unfortunate vessel lured to its doom by these sub-human cut-throats. Preparing to surrender my life dearly, I adopted a menacing posture and with a blood curdling oath leapt backwards towards the door. Unfortunately my path was barred by a slathering poodle, no doubt the former property of some Society beauty who had perished at the hands of these brigands, which tripped me up and snapped viciously at my vital organs. The next I knew a great sea-boot narrowly missed my head and the poodle went flying through the air. Hoping for a swift end I shut my eyes and thought of Blighty. "You must be the visiting adjudicator", I heard, and looking up into the demented features of my assassin I saw that it was not a dagger that he held, but a quill pen. "Welcome to the home of the Five Litre Poets", he continued, "let us refresh you before tackling the Muse."

It seemed that I had stumbled upon a gang of itinerant poets who were about to indulge in their annual orgy of pathetic poetry and liquid licentiousness. From then on I had a wonderful time, as far as I can remember, until I woke up in an open drain with a throbbing head and an empty wallet. In my pocket however, I had scraps of paper with barely legible writings. I now introduce to you some of the works of the Five Litre Poets.

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     Cricket and Clubbing in Cheltenham Spa

The Cheltenham Cricket Festival is not to be missed and indeed it was not. Athough the Ottoman Sultans XI has never played on the hallowed turf of Cheltenham Boys College (not that they didn't appreciate boys, of course!), W.G Grace, who was much admired in both Empires, was a mighty performer here, in his later years very reminiscent in style of the great Suleyman himself. The setting for the Festival with its many colourful tents, swaggering cricketing knights with their faithful tealady followers lurking in the great Pavilion, and the frenzied wild-eyed mob under the lesser awnings awaiting the savage destruction of the infidels and the enjoyment of the spoils of battle, could well have been taken from the 1389 Battle of Kosova. Unfortunately however, the result was more akin to the route at Vienna in 1683, leaving once mighty Gloucestershire consigned to the second division of English cricket. However we were more concerned this time round with the peripheral festivities, specifically within the Tents of of the Imbibers, where all sorts of buffoonery was rife. These tents are run by local clubs and societies, and vie with each other to attract the more preposterous and free spending camp followers. Prominent among them were the Portland Club (nee the Conservative Club before the Great Downfall, but now resurrected under the inspired stewardship of Hodson Tilley of which more about in the future), where lively, if somewhat incoherent and repetitive discussion centred around the latest manifesto of theBritish Goverment in Exile. Others of note included the Charlton Kings Working Men's Club, the Old Patesians Association and the Montpellier Wine Bar Cricket Society. Prominent in its continuing boycott however, was the Cheltenham Bowling Club, although there were numerous reported sightings of their thinly-disguised but invariably merry steward, Gwynfor Jenkins.

Outside a priviledged circle little is known of the opportunities and high excitement of clubbing in Cheltenham Spa, a situation which deserves, and will be addressed in te near future.

         Cultural and Scientific Exchanges in Gottingen

Moving on from the Cricket Festival I join a party of civic dignities and other miscellaneous Cheltenham riff-raff on an expedition to Gottingen, it being for the past 48 years our twin town in Germany. My interest is social and scientific. Firstly to see if our Teutonic friends still enjoy the same zest for life that have made them such fun in the past, and then to seek inspiration from the University that has spawned over 40 Nobel Laureates. On the former front we are so regally entertained on the first morning by their Groupenburgermeister and his staff that we are too overcome to view the folk dancing or listen to the warblings of the municipal choirs in the evening, instead having to recover our composure in a typical Irish Pub of the area. Gottingen is also famous for its sausages and I am charged with reporting on these for the Kemble Brewery Sausage Society, sadly however, sausages seem to be like grouse for the Germans and are apparently out of season. Not to despair, I am able to partake of excellent Turkish food in some the many eating houses now run by our friends from the former Ottoman empire. Excellent and copious local beer, a rancorous 'friendly' football match between the twin towns, a day trip to Berlin, and the culminating Big Party completed the social niceties.

For scienfic inspiration I view the statue of Gauss and Weber (they detested each other, it seems) and visit the grave of Gauss (Weber had been sent into exile by then, I was told). For some reason Hilbert only warrants a bus stop and a street name. I stand outside the Max Planck Gymnasium, thinking that a sudden bout of humour must have overcome the Germans in the early days of quantum mechanics and that they insisted on all young students emulating the lowly particles by leaping from point A to Point B in no time at all. My thoughts are dashed by some priggish upstart who points out that it is merely a german word for Institute. No poetry in scientific soles, it appears. I resolve to speed up our researches into the development of a new type of human being and and commission our team back home to start work immediately.

         End of Season in Istanbul

Off to Istanbul, on secret Sultans' work, I am accompanied by our Lifestyles correspondent who is investigating the pleasures of the Bosphorus for the first time. This enables me to add to my mosque and palace counts and to reacquaint myself with eastern pleasures, notably raki and belly dancing (in that order, of course) and the culinary and viniculture delights of the City. I am also able to make some detailed researches into the life and times of a number of the Sultans, in particular the wild but often misunderstood Abdulazid. Our reports of the tour can be expected soon. In the meanwhile for the first-time visitor I continue to believe that Istanbul represents the most fascinating first three days available anywhere, providing our members take advantage of our inside information.

       Buffoonery on the Thames

To Cheltenham again with both hip flasks charged, for Bill Broadfoot's Birthday Booze Cruise, where our hero is making his final worldly birthday appearance. Since receiving his official notification that the Grim Reaper is at the door, Bill has written two books, the first of which is a jolly good read, while the second, The Boatman of Ballantrae, promises to be a masterpiece. Prospective publishers should contact us without delay. But back to the birthday: in Bill's own words, taken verbatim from one of his speeches to the assembled company during the day, "The Saatchis amassed pictures of nude ladies riding through seas of elephant turd, and called it a Collection. Gentlemen, you are my Collection." His collection in fact consists of venerable merrymakers from many walks of life, with the common traits of irreverence, eccentricity, indolence, futile endevour and hopeless optimism that make up the backbone of of our anarchic society, 50 of whom are now ensconced on an old rust bucket and zig-zagging from watering hole to watering hole along the river Thames from Oxford to Abingdon. We are not to reach Abingdon, however, due to a combination of circumstances that include an attempt to keel haul the party organisor, a movement to burn the boat and turn it into a funeral pyre for Bill, a promise (unfulfilled) of a boat load of lap dancers arriving, and the outbreak of fighting among the Scottish members of the Collection. Back at the Clubhouse celebrations continue well into the night, but I make a discrete withdrawal as the scene moves towards unpublishable bacchanalia. Up until that point events had been recorded surreptitiously by our undercover team and will be made available to our membership in due course, including the infamous Denouncement of the Committee speech.