The Accordion Incident

Now, well I didn’t want to mention it, but certain recent events have now made it inevitable. It now seems that, despite all over fervent attempts to forestall it, soon it will be possible – under immanent EU legislation - for anyone to walk around the streets, roads and byways of this once-great land whilst freely wielding an accordion with intent to cause seriously bodily harm to any pure innocent tune they take in into their minds to subject to the full horror of that dread instrument.

Now, it has long been a tradition on the continent to continue with cruel and harmful sports that we in the British Isles have long-since forsworn, such as: bullfighting in Spain, wearing a beret in France and the German proclivity for foisting sauerkraut on the unsuspecting.

It was after the scandal of Royal Navy cabin boys being exposed to the full horrors of the unleashed accordion was presented to a shocked populace by the Victorian newspapers that the British government was forced to take action and ban the user of accordions – except between consenting adults over the age of 21 – in public places, especially with the intent to inflict it on any nearby tune.

Since then, of course, the British tabloid press (especially that bastion of the moral panic – the Daily Mail) have all devoted themselves to exposing the menace of the accordion whenever and wherever it has been discovered.

Now, though, with this EU ruling about to be implemented no-one – except, of course, the tabloids who are all shrilly and gleefully proclaiming the end of the British way of life as we know it – knows where it will all end.