The Adventures of Rambling Bob

Through the mist and dewy haze, I beheld the most noble of sights.

Our organisation, like a moth from some ancient cocoon, stirred and threatened to return and cast its bonds asunder.

Tall and long is the tale that will soon be told.

Vive Le A.R.S.E

I crept through the darkness --

--was I too late to catch him?

Light twas my footfall as I chanced a stride over the mushy carcass of Curbishley. I shooed Jasper aside as I clasped my kerchief to my nose and peered at his pathetic frame in the half light.

The sun was rising over the Campsies and beckoned a new dawn upon the horrendous murder of this once proud and erect gentleman. A thin triangular toblerone of light cut through the dank, heavy curtains like a rapier through soft camembert and shimmered a little, sad morsel of life into one of his still opened eyes.

Being not forensically savvy, I could not offer speculated musings upon the manner of Curbishley’s demise, but I hedged a flimsy bet that the jagged shard of walking cane inserted seemingly violently into his perianal area did nothing to slow his passing.

I turned his body over, leaving the stick in his hinterhole. Jasper was lapping at one of his frontal wounds. I rapped him in his lion-like cat façade and examined the wound more clearly. In his upper chest, at the left side was a strange looking entry wound – a pulsating, bloodied gash no less! Strange was the implement that had forced entry into this old man’s body.

I was about to finger the hole to locate bullet fragments when I heard the pithy sound of a door creaking.

It had yet to occur to me that the perpetrator of this deed of horror: this occidare, may very well still be at the scene in the dim shadows of morning.

I had time to leap into the confined space between the refrigerator and the kitchen door before person or persons most foul began slowly to ease it open…

Unfortunately the stench hitherto mentioned in mine previous oeuvre has now permeated into my bedchamber and has taken on the disgusting odour of much ignominy.

As the dim shackles of night were cast asunder and the liberated dew of morning came running naked from its internment, alone was I in my hinterwear, nose pressed curiously against the vents of my vestibule and chamber assessing the extent of the arid whiffs of shame.

Deftly, I crept like an otter through the grey lit halls of my abode, past the horror knocking shop of old Mrs Fairweather as she brought another navvy to his hopeless climax for cash. Still the whiff endured.

I followed its calling down the steps, my hands groping against the banister and tiled wall. I felt my way precariously like a first time sex pest, grasping at petticoat and bloomers. A shard of sunlight cut through the darkness like a prism of contentment. The light fell on the door of apartment number 69 – old man Curbishley’s hovel.

Curbishley, a former academic and one time trustee of the now defunct Ramblers Engineers And Rotary Polemic And Skilled Structural Artist Group Endeavours, lived alone and ventured out only to pick up the Morning Star and whistle venom at the scantly clad milk white legs of priss school mams.

The smell, now almost knocking me out of my paisley patterned slippers, issued forth from under the door like a badly timed quip at a spastic fundraiser. Jasper, my erstwhile cat companion and procurer of much lols came between my legs and nudged the door ajar with his lion-like face.

I followed my cat inside. I turned into the kitchen and called Curbishley’s moniker into the darkness.

I heard a simple miaow as if Jasper had reached the conclusion of a letter chock full of heartache from his sweetheart back home whom he pined endlessly for in some muddy trench in Europe. But this was no noise of wartime cat heartache. This was Jasper’s oft used croak to inform your humble narrator of some great ill.

I met the source of the rotten pong at last -

- the badly decomposing body of Charles M Curbishley.

RB

That’s right; I said there’s a rancid fucking pong in my vestibule.

It’s been there for around sixteen minutes and it is driving me to utter distraction.

Unfortunately, it reeks not of mint nor embergrass nor wild spunk flowers but is more reminiscent of stale crayfish sprinkled with the mushy stomach bile of a victim of Ebola.

I am simply at mine wit's end as to its origin. In my youth, I spent several years as a farm hand and am no stranger to pongs universal. However this acrid stink is tearing me from my merry musings.

Must find the source.

Smells like shit cheese.

Out in the field. Heavy wind. Cow flew past head. Numb extremities. Frozen piss. More soon.

RB

"...halfway into the opening of the anus until the hilt.

However, back onto the subject of rambling, a veritable pastime which may empower and deflower the mid-day walker to such degree that he may exact a firm level of glee, gait and gaiety.

We ramble. We ramble. Why do we ramble? We cross over fence and fen to enoble the spirit. To fill the lungs with crisp atominons of airfresh and taste the scent of honeysuckle, the rimflower and the quiverhorse into our souls.

We ramble, not because we can, but because we must.

But moving back to the anus..."

Rambling in the Eighteenth Century, and Musings on Defecation by Sir Quicey Nice IV

I decided after many moon's rest to put the bramble feelers out and test tread upon the idea of reforming the once guilded, Anarchist Ramblers of Scotland and England.

Regular readers of this walker's oeuvre may be able to tell you that at one time there was nothing more noble to the hinterland trekking cause, nothing more reassuring, more impenterable and more tighter than A.R.S.E.

In dark times ladies and gentlekind, we begate our greatest members in the hard struggle to free this nation's walkways, fords and bramble paths from the crushing fist of privately controlled tyranny. Our members were murdered, had their reputations smeared and their berghaus defecated upon. Yet never did we crumble in spirit. Our members may have scattered beyond the fields of justice. But with such names as Alex J Walker, Buck Tremaine and Findlay Vinecreep upon mine shield, I shall set forth to rebrand A.R.S.E. We can rise again. We can break free from the amistad of barbed field gates, streams deliberatey polluted with nematode worms and lusty, erect bulls. We can embark on the long, lonely road to freedom once more!

Over stile with style!

Up the A.R.S.E!

Bob Rambling.

Some miscreant smacked my window with a rock at half four this morning. I leapt out of my bed and rushed to the broken frame in time to see the bandit sprinting off into the twilight.

Attached to the rock twas afixed a message,

"Welcum (sic) back, Bob. Your (sic) dead you total cunt. There (sic) going to kill you. Cunt. You and ure (sic) kind make me sic (sic)."

Normal service resumeth.

...I walked through my old front door for the first time in an age.

The door, heavy and unlubed creaked on its hinges and took some mighty thrust to ejaculate the heavymound of newspapers and junk mail which had accumulated under the letter slit.

Under a quilt of cobwebs, dust and heavy funk, I could make out my old furniture - the old Edwardian globe given me by Alex J Walker, the fine oak drinks cabinet left to me by Great Uncle Ricktawd Rambling before he lost his face in the Boer skirmish and, most lovingly of all - my old antique gramophone.

I put on Ayn Rand's best accordian melodies and lit myself a pipe - ease myself back in nicely.

RB