A Year With the Brighouse Stars Walking Club - The September Weekend Part 1

A Year with the Brighouse Stars Walking Club

The Club September Weekend

Part 1 – Friday

A note

Readers of the previous tales of the Brighouse Stars Walking Club will be familiar with Lionel’s story. Although all inhabitants of his distant planet are androgynous, in the interest of clarity Lionel has been given here the pronouns he / him.

Any road up……

The first call for a pee stop was made at 14.15, exactly eight minutes after the minibus had left The Star car park. Technically, they were still not out of Brighouse as The Whippet and Radiator – situated conveniently twenty yards up the road when the call came in – was located in that strange hinterland between the town and Lightcliffe.

The shout had come from Lionel, the only member of the club who could genuinely claim to be a species of space alien, rather than that being an insult that might be hurled at someone in the course of a heated argument.

Lionel, who originally hailed from the planet Mexidon, had officially joined the Brighouse Stars Walking Club only a few weeks previously. He had been working behind the bar at the Short-Sighted Labrador in Todmorden, but had recently been chased out of town after being implicated in a number of sexual affairs with the locals.

When he had originally landed on the planet Earth back in May, Lionel sported one large eye in the centre of his massively oversized head – albeit on a normal sized body. These extraordinary quirks had represented the best efforts of the finest brains on his planet to replicate the more salient features of the human race. Although Lionel had blended in quite nicely in Todmorden, he had raised more than a few eyebrows in Brighouse.

St John – the de facto leader of the club on its walks – had developed a friendship with Lionel after they had unexpectedly met up again in the pub in Todmorden following his safe landing from outer space into West Yorkshire. Despite the fact that it was something of a traumatic experience for St John to be reunited with Lionel, he had agreed to accommodate him on a temporary basis when he was hounded out of Todmorden. St John convinced his wife Julie that Lionel was a distant cousin on his Aunt Ethel’s side whose chippy in Blackpool had recently gone bust.

We learned previously that a feature of Lionel’s species is that they do not consume any form of liquid and nor consequently do they produce any waste products. When Lionel (and his planet’s Executive Committee) were exposed to alcohol – which of course we now know to be the key factor in the saving of planet Earth – Lionel’s internal assimilation system required some fundamental changes. (He had of course quickly added the required external appendage which he had soon learned to put to good use in other areas).

A Doctor Panniker had been asked to oversee this delicate project but unfortunately he had suffered a complete mental and physical collapse immediately following his initial examination of Lionel. Hence the changes to his internal plumbing system had become something of a DIY trial and error exercise for Lionel. The calling for a ridiculously early pee stop was an example of a good deal of tweaking still being required.

It has to be said that although Lionel was the only one calling for a pee stop, the other occupants of the minibus also saw fit to exit the vehicle and hurry into the lounge bar of The Whippet and Radiator.

All except the driver of course. One of St John’s contacts was an ex-policeman who owned a minibus company and who allowed the club to hire a vehicle for their annual September weekend excursion at mates’ rates. This also meant that from an insurance perspective no questions were asked about who would be doing the driving. This worked favourably for Blanky – the designated driver – what with him being eight-six, stone deaf and sporting (at the last count) one glass eye. He had driven every September weekend for the previous thirty-five years and his high-speed antics behind the wheel had earned him the epithet of The Wing Commander.

‘Right then you lot’, said St John, ‘at this rate we’ll not make Kirby Lonsdale until next September. First of all this has now been officially designated a one pint stop only. Secondly, we’re out of here in ten minutes and come what may this is the last stop until we pick Petty up at the Rabid Unicorn in Settle. I’ve arranged to borrow a petrol can from the landlord so that Lionel can pee at his leisure without needing to stop the bus from here on in’.

If St John had meant the address to present his more authoritative side then the effect was diluted somewhat by the fact that he had a pint in one hand and a double whisky chaser in the other.

It might be appropriate at this point to introduce the other occupants of the minibus who were embarking on a weekend’s walking and drinking in the Dales.

We have already been introduced to St John, Wolfy and Heathcliffe in earlier episodes. Lionel we believe to be the only member of the club known to be a space alien. Blanky of course was the driver.

Additionally on board were Lumby - aka El Presidento, the non-walking president of the club, Rockin’ Ronnie, Denbo and the newest recruit Gardener Tom.

In fact Tom was the only member of the club who didn’t hail from either Brighouse or from a planet situated in a distant galaxy. Tom’s company was arguably the foremost landscape gardeners in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire; the Capability Brown of Barnsley if you will. Tom was introduced to the walking club when he and his team were putting the finishing touches to the extensive redesign they had made to the garden of The Reluctant Beaver in Castleton when the lads breezed in at the end of a day’s walking. There was some light hearted banter and then one drink led to another, and then just before Tom lost consciousness they exchanged phone numbers with promises to meet up again for a walk and yes Tom would love to come on the September weekend.

Readers may wonder at this stage about the lack of any female presence. Wives and girlfriends do in fact feature regularly on the club walks arranged for the first Sunday in every month, but the annual September weekend remains the preserve of the lads. It has to be said that the wives and girlfriends – who would be enjoying themselves all that afternoon and evening in the Grapes and Galoshes Wine bar in Bradford – wouldn’t have it any other way.

The onward journey towards Kirby Lonsdale proceeded without further incident or alarm. The air was filled with war stories of previous walks and drinking affairs along with the aroma from Lionel’s petrol can which was a heady mixture of extraterrestrial urine and Texaco unleaded.

Petty was waiting for them at the Rabid Unicorn in Settle when they turned up in the late afternoon. In fact the word waiting gives the wrong impression as he’d been sat drinking steadily with the regulars since the doors opened at 12 o’clock. Once all the lads had returned from their respective dashes to the toilet, Petty enthusiastically shook everyone’s hand. Petty had relocated from the Brighouse area some years before when he was made redundant following the collapse of the carpet industry. He had retrained as a hospital porter and confidant to the nursing staff at Castleberg Community Hospital. Additionally, he was the only member of the club who had yet to meet Lionel. However, the shock at the first sight of such a strange and other worldly countenance appeared not to affect Lionel in the slightest.

So with everyone now on board the final leg of the journey to The Gerbil and Jockey in Kirby Lonsdale could get underway.

The walking club had stayed at this particular pub on a September weekend three years previously. In fact it was the only pub that had ever allowed them to stay on more than the one occasion.

There is of course a tale behind this unique set of circumstances.

The landlord of The Gerbil and Jockey, one Jack Sidebottom, had been a borderline alcoholic for many years. He opened the doors of his pub to weekend parties with open arms. The standing bet that he had with all such parties was that if he wasn’t the last man standing on the Saturday night then he would reimburse the drinks bill run up by the party. If he was the last man then the party would have to pay his drinks bill – usually a frightening amount. Until the arrival of The Brighouse Stars he had never paid out a penny.

When the club had stayed for the weekend previously, not only had Jack been outdrunk by Lumby, Denbo and Petty, he had fallen down the steps to the cellar at 3am when yet another barrel change was required. In what was seen retrospectively as an act of vanity by the aforementioned Brighouse triumvirate, they had stayed awake for the rest of the early morning and - eschewing tea and coffee – washed their breakfast’s down with double brandies.

Jack’s broken leg was treated at Castleberg Community Hospital where he was visited daily by Petty the porter. Jack said that they would of course be welcome back anytime, even though meeting the costs of their bar bill had left him on the verge of bankruptcy. Privately he couldn’t wait to extract revenge and vowed to return to training full time on his discharge from hospital.   

The remainder of the Friday evening passed uneventfully. The lads were all safely tucked up in bed by 2am as they had to be fully prepared to tackle the mother of all full English breakfasts that would be prepared by Jack’s wife Beryl, to be followed by the challenge of ascending Whernside during the day.