Welcome to the Discworld & Pratchett Wiki. Have fun, contribute and be warned articles may contain nuts and spoilers to the plots of the books.
Bledlows
From Discworld & Pratchett Wiki
| Bledlow | |
 | |
| Name | |
| Age | |
| Race | |
| Occupation | Security for Unseen University |
| Looks | |
| Residence | |
| Death | |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | |
| Books | The Last Continent |
| Cameos | |
The Bledlows or "lobsters" are the policemen of the Unseen University. They are mostly former watchmen and soldiers, heavy-set and have quite a good turn of speed for their age. Like watchmen everywhere, they believe in the universal guilt of everybody, in their case the students.
They have a time-honoured and arcane ceremony at two in the morning which is akin to the Changing of the Guards in other cities of the Multiverse, only louder and more obtrusive, involving the Patting of the Pockets, the I'll Swear They Were Here This Morning, and the Stone Me, They Were Here All Along, involving the signing over of keys between the incoming and outgoing porters. Attempts to get them to turn the volume down a bit are regarded as gross insults from people who while they might know the value of a good night's sleep, have no respect for deeper values such as Tradition.
In The Last Hero and the The Science of Discworld series, the Bledlows are used by Ridcully to prevent Rincewind from running away: when, confronted by an act of heroism, Rincewind follows his better instincts by turning and running, he doesn't get very far before being (gently) restrained by grinning Bledlows, who are noteworthy in that they have succeeded where other, younger, guards with more weapons and attitude have failed. They are, in short, the one body of men who Rincewind cannot outrun or evade, which says a lot for all the practice they get chasing down students...
It is clear they are based on the proctors and porters of the older British universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. Although UEA Norwich (est. 1963) had its characters in the Porters' Lodge too...
Annotation
The Changing of the Arch-Chancellor's Keys, and the Bursar's ineffectual complaints about it going on under his window, has its resonances in other ways in which Tradition allows those of lower rank to tweak the noses of their social superiors. In the Gordon Highlanders, for instance, the pipe band was allowed to sound reveille on Friday mornings to awaken the barracks. Always, without fail, the full pipes and drums would assemble in absolute silence beneath the windows of the junior officers' quarters, and, at six in the morning, awaken their lieutenants with a shattering rendition of "Johnnie Cope", the Scottish Army's traditional "Charge!", from fifteen feet away. Attempts to remonstrate with the band were inevitably futile...
