Back home in Cambridge from The North, I had a day off to make excuses about pruning the hedge (no idea) before Simon arrived on my doorstep.
If you want, you can skip this post and read the BRAPA report here. I don’t care, I’ve already got your page view. Think of this as my alternate version of his Blind Date report (no, don’t)
As Dick and Dave have found out this week, weird things happen when you meet Simon, or act as his unpaid chauffeur round the badlands of South Cambridgeshire.
In true Partridge fashion, I spent ten minutes pursuing Simon between Royston’s north and south platforms shouting “Simon !” “Simon!”. You can’t miss him.
He was mildly obsessed with pets for some reason, so I took him past CPC Pet Crematorium at Duxford. I haven’t marked it on the map, as I don’t want it to become a place of pilgrimage for BRAPA fans. But you can identify it from the billowing smoke.
Knowing that a master of pub blogging needs his space, I left him to the locals at the Plough (my earlier report here), and joined Duxford’s tourists. Gentlefolk near the picture postcard John Barleycorn were comparing flowers, I kid you not.
Simon went to Primary school near here, and I found a pleasing example of his latin graffiti.
This is one of those Cambs villages where curtains twitch, and all eyes were on me as I snapped happily, prostrate in the graveyard.
If the twitchers got off their sofas and visited their local then Duxford wouldn’t have a sad High Street with two closed pubs in a row, I ranted. To myself.
Simon seemed quite pleased with the Plough, noting a busier local than expected, and we coined the blog title “Dead Cat Bounce” which I claimed as payment for my taxi duties.
He was less taken with the GastroMax of the Green Man, another one I sat out in favour of a pointless Cambs walk.
Thriplow is famous for its daffodils. Unfortunately they were all dead when we arrived. I don’t hold Simon personally responsible.
Pleasingly, I managed to walk the bounds in 29 minutes, passing the grain store and other notable village highlights en route.
Some excellent farmyard art as well.
29 minutes, and Si berates me as he’s been waiting for 90 seconds ! The man is obsessive. I needed a drink.
Simon does seem to make more of an effort than you but then I suppose he has youth on his side and the begrudgery of age hasn’t crept in yet.
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Dick and Dave learned they are very jeayof his hair. What style. Made me sad to be bald.
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Sorry ? His hair ?
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You bet. Great styling. We know as bald men.
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Never thought of you as bald, well groomed men both.
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“In true Partridge fashion, I spent ten minutes pursuing Simon between Royston’s north and south platforms shouting “Simon !” “Simon!”. ”
Heh. Did that with my brother at the Lille station back in 2008. We figured we’d leave the meet up plans until the last weekend on Skype; and then his Internet went out just prior. If only he’d told me there was a bloody bar there it would have solved everything! 🙂
“Si wo ere 1988”
I think he was CXXIV years too late mate. 🙂
“as I snapped happily, prostrate in the graveyard.”
Ahhh. Pros-trate. For a second there I thought you were taking very intimate pictures of corpses. 😉
“Possibly not a brewery”
That little shed on the right is the perfect size for a micro. 🙂
“I needed a drink.”
Don’t we all. (LOL)
Cheers!
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Were you at least both in the same station in Lille?
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Lilleshall isn’t far.
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Are you sure you met up in Royston and not Royston Vasey?
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Simon was conceived in Royston Vasey, I feel sometimes.
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It’s not that weird. And he wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Or support Hull.
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Good point, well made. Makes you wonder what influence Saffron Walden had on the poor lad as a schoolboy.
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Even the name sounds like a c19th obscure backbench Liberal politician. MP for Dunny on the Wold perhaps.
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