Bedford, England

Bedford town, dwells in the county of Bedfordshire. How redundant can the name of a town and its county be, eh? We are twinned with Bamburg in Germany. I've never understood what that's all about; twinning towns in England with European ones. Why would the English want to be like Germans or Poles or Italians? Actually, why does Bedford need to be twinned with any town from Italy seeing as a huge number of Bedfordians are Italian anyway?

I know, I know. It's all about cultural pollination, isn't it? It's meant to bring all the Europeans together. It's meant to help us put aside those differences we harbour about what to call chocolate or how straight we think a banana should be. Or help us forget about the war. Yes, the war. That's really what town-twinning is about, I think. On some deep level, it's about saying we Brits forgive our old foes; the ones that killed and maimed our young men while Glenn Miller played to the nation from the Bedford Corn Exchange.

Maybe our next holiday should be to Bamburg? Maybe we can learn a thing or two. Would we find a river like the Ouse there? I love English names for things. I want to say Ouse over and over again. Ouse. Ouse. Ouse. That's basically what it does when there's been rain. Its banks break and turn the embankment into a mud bath. And then it oozes onto Goldington Green to make the local pub owners despair at the rising cost of their insurance.

We're lucky. We live up on a hilly bit of Putnoe.

Bedford gave the world John Bunyan too. He wrote "Pilgrim's Progress" so school children had somewhere interesting to be taken on a field-trip when it came to religious studies. Actually, he stood against the established church and was thrown in prison for it. There's a pub in town called the Pilgrim's Progress as well. It depicts some scenes from the story. I wonder if there's a Pilgrim's Progress in Bamburg.

Bedford's not quite East Anglia and it's not quite Midlands and it's not quite South East either. It's sort of in the middle. But it shares a lot of the pagan East Anglian and Southern County love for things green. Bamburg has a "Green Man" legend with motifs appearing on cathedrals and churches. There is a "Green Man" pub somewhere in Lidlington up the road. And there ends the connection, in my opinion.

I was darkly impressed with the fact Bedford Prison is right next to a girls' school. They hung James Hanratty there for the A6 murder in the 1960's. My husband likes reading about things like that. Hanratty was innocent until they said he was guilty. I can't find any gruesome murder stories about Bamburg, yet.


Maybe Bedford ought to be twinned with a different town?

Hazera F

Submitted: Friday 20th February 2004, 7:06 AM

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