Friday, September 19, 2003

Lancelot
Before I came to live in France I used to work in a bank in a little market town. For a while one of my duties on Thursday and Friday mornings was to run the sub branch on a local trading estate. For this purpose I had a body guard and his name really was Lacelot. He was a retired policeman of the old school. One of my colleagues told me that when he was young you behaved yourself in the evenings because Lacelot was on foot and could appear in silence. While I served customers, Lancelot would count the Goodwill collection for the Abbey and make the tea, he could also stop dead, with a withering look, any of the lads from the local factories who tried to make clever comments. Unfortunately the sub branch closed down and for a while Lancelot would come in to the office to count the Goodwill money (I made the tea this time), then he took final retirement and I haven't seen him since.

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