The Aberystwyth Falcon

The road to Aberystwyth (home of his lovely friends Polly and Dafydd) is a long and winding one and many of such winds can beset the path of the righteous man. So sending a rather smug text reading “Not sure what has happened to all the cars but there are none! Think I am going to be very early!” is brave, nay, foolhardy.

Sure enough he then spent a very long hour stuck behind a serious of very slow tractors.

Sensibly his latest trips to the wilds of West Wales coincided with Polly’s birthday (decorum prevents us recording that this is her 32nd) and, in light of his state of tractor induced agitation, the glass of champagne waiting for him as he walked through the front door was most welcome.

A fine evening of wine, food and nostalgia followed before Polly launched into a tirade of abuse at the rather threadbare nature of his socks. So embarrassed was he at the venom of her abuse that he promptly threw them on the fire. Sadly they were so threadbare they barely made an impression.

With the socks duly sacrificed to Pyros Dafydd and he moved onto the blackberry whisky. Now your correspondent has always understood the idea of flavoured vodkas (to give the blasted stuff some sort of taste) but whisky seems to be a different matter.

He can report that a) blackberry whisky tastes of blackberries and is quite pleasant and b) it has psychotropic affects. With this stuff inside them they descended into a cornucopia of chuckles reminiscing about a weekend the two of them spent in Cardiff many years ago with Rib Robs (passim). Suffice to illustrate that weekend is to recall the afternoon spent watching the rugby whilst Rib Robs sat quietly holding the hand of a somewhat slow girl in the corner.

In all we trust our readers can discern a heavy night. Fortunately Polly was on hand in the morning with some porridge to aid their recovery before setting off for the real purpose of this trip.

Now Polly and Dafydd have been married a little over a year and have struggled to work out precisely how they wish to be known (in a surname sense) but finally came to agreement over the Summer and our hero agreed to help with the necessary documentary formalities. Polly and Dafydd being Polly and Dafydd could not just sign the papers but had to make the entire thing a performance and so decided that they wanted to celebrate their new names in a pantheistic ceremony at the top of a mountain.

Yes, you read correctly, they wanted to drag the poor lad to the top of a mountain just to sign a deed.

Somehow his heart and lungs managed to last the trip and when they arrived at the summit he produced with a great flourish the paperwork. Imagine how crestfallen he was when Polly pointed out that he had got their new name wrong. Amateur night.

Despite this demonstration of gross incompetence after some quick manuscript amendments the deeds were signed and the champagne was flowing. Suffice to record that the trip down full to the gun whales with booze was a lot more fun than the trip up.

Having returned to their cottage and a fine high tea of home-baked cake they were planning to head into Aberystwyth for some supper but, bluntly, they got battered too quickly to face the trip and ended up eating cowl and ice-cream. Now this might give the impression that Polly and Dafydd contributed to the ice-cream eating stakes but truth to tell he ate it all (and when we say all we mean 2 pots of the entire stuff).

Whilst tucking into this feast they also experimented with the blackberry whisky mixing it with champagne. We can record that it tastes very nice, sadly we can also report that it gets you seriously battered very very quickly.

He awoke in the morning with a raging hangover before diving into his car for the tediously long journey home from Aberystwyth. Now we say tediously long but thanks to his total disregard for the speed-limit laws he managed to get it done in a terrifying time before heading up to a solid afternoon of corporate hospitality at the rugger.

Bristol smashed the hell out of ‘Quins which was most enjoyable but somewhat less enjoyable was the call he received when he got home from the one we don’t mention’s father to let him know that the one we don’t mention was in hospital. Now it is pretty obvious what the one we don’t mention is up to; desperately trying to draw attention to herself and away from his other friend who is off to hospital tomorrow. It’s not big and it’s not clever.