Email conversation between Bonehead & myself:
Bonehead: Used your baton yet?
Elberry: not yet. i don’t feel a need to carry it about as my aura of evil usually deters anyone coming anywhere near me. i’d probably carry it if i had to go to Longsight, which will never happen. i’ll probably take it to London for a conference in late September, as i always feel a bit disorientated in strange places, and then a baton is a good thing to have.
Bonehead: nothing orientates a man better than a baton, it also rhymes with Patton. Look at Tom Cruise in Collateral when he gets in the shit with those gooks in japtown, it all starts to come apart and then he gets his hands on a baton and restores order.
Elberry: it has a stout old-fashioned feel to it, like the college porters i saw at Oxford, manning the gates – they all wore greatcoats & bowler hats and resembled 6′ tall pork pies. Only a fool would mess with men in bowler hats.
It’s National ‘Wear your uniform to work day’ this Wednesday, and one of my colleagues (a first World War historian) is planning to wear his 1WW uniform, complete with gun and bayonet.
Now, a bayonet at work: think of the fun you could have with one of those…