Bedford Blues

The very fine second-tier Rugby Union club that is Bedford sports the entitled colour, and hence their nickname. Pretty uninspiring compared to some sporting alternatives, although others do often beggar belief.  The 'Black Cats' of Sunderland being my favourite in the last decade.  Black and blue, however, do lend themselves to my current mood.

The colours also prompt me that the sirens of Her Majesty's Idiots are referred to as 'blues and twos'.  The 'blues' for the uniform as was, before they started pretending they were commandos or paratroopers, and number twos for their level of appreciation in society, one assumes.  The Illegitimi arrested me again last night, returning to the levels of Bedford. I love conspiracy theories, but I am beginning to suspect I am the latest victim.

Plod reckoned I was driving without lights: pretty difficult to do when you have motored 80 miles across country since dusk fell, encountering significant traffic en route.  Just to enforce his theory, I was arrested and removed to Greyfriars, again, for a session with the breather and a discussion about licences and insurance.

Bedford's Greyfriars is not the learning seat of Billy Bunter, as I might have wished, because I was very hungry and I remembered that Bunter was the original recipient of all the pies.  He being the Fat Owl of the Remove, I recall.  It is in fact the Grey Lubyanka, which welcomes its argumentative citizens every so often for a little taste of Byzantine stupidity and wholesome solitary confinement.  If I had been born a couple of centuries earlier I would have been hanged by now!

Still, I beat them down, once again, and regained my liberty.  Merely another charge to add to the November date 'Tear in the Square' that I am promoting.  Me versus the Crown Prosecution Service.  Should be a good bout, as I have been reading Private Eye and they have been wasting tax-payers' money.  'Have your day in Court', said Sergeant Bloodhound as I signed the latest bail release.  I apologise to the Byzantines among you: I am merely trying to describe a complex web of intractability.  I do not ascribe this web to intelligence.

They love me down at old Greyfriars!  Don't you just bet?

Anyway, to cheer the mood, read Elmore Leonards's 'Tishomingo Blues'.  Thanks to my Daily Mailer for putting me onto this author many years ago; I have only just read this particular wonderful piece of Southern Life.  I know there are lots of blues stories from the States, James Lee Burke being another particular favourite, but this just made me want to emigrate!  Probably jumping bail, cos, Man, have I got the Bedford Blues!