The deep south

Ventured to the deep south for the first time in aeons for a virtual/actual blogface interface with fellow blogger StoneFee in Bedford. A great night it was too, as Bedders, as we always affectionately called it, looks to uptrendify itself with swank new apartments and rugby and gastro pubs that used to be known as prison-locals, as they were so close to Bedford nick, which acts as an ad-hoc Victorian crack n' porn roundabout in Bedford town centre. There's still parts of the old town that need bulldozing however. The bus station is indeed, as a Facebook group has it, the gateway to hell, and Midland Road is a challenge to get to from one end to another without an aggressive in-yer-face beggar slashing you up for shrapnel. We went into the sensitively named Pilgrims Progress pub, which, unlike in John Bunyan's day, is a place where you can get a pint for 89p and your head koshed for even less. On the way to another pub, a bloke sidled up to us, slovenly and looking like Rory McGrath on hard times. He wanted to know where the bus station was and we were only too glad to tell him, hoping he'd sidle back out of our lives. He did indeed slope off, into the drivers seat of an E-type jag parked nearby. I guess thats where the north-south divide still counts.