keyword "moustache" title "bonnie and clive" in misc. flash fiction

Even though the American tradition of the hero-criminal is dated back to English mythology and the tale of Robin Hood, the American stories of the good-guy-thief have always seemed so much bloodier than Robin Hood. Robin’s exploits always seemed to minimize the bloodshed when he could, knocking someone out with a forest trap or arrow trick or a good blunt quarter-staff to the back of the head and even if the man of Sherwood killed in a few interpretations of his stories, it was always when there was no other choice, usually in direct self-defense or to prevent the death of one of his less violent associates, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian or whatever. American outlaws on the side of right seem to much more often be enthusiastic killers for whatever reason, though that does not take away from the fact that there were many other Robin Hood types in the U.K.

There was of course the great British bandit couple Bonnie and Clive who famously nicked four Flake bars from the druggist’s and, during their escape, threw three toffee apples at the boot of a bobby’s lorry. Scandalized reports ran on the Beeb for weeks, they did. All over the tabloid back pages, scattered by the winds within the Tube, many a monocle dropped over their mad exploits.

It was all part of a long tradition of bandits embraced by the working men and women of Great Britain’s isles. There were the James Lads, brothers Frank and Desmond James, renown about all the north of Europe for running into banks, taking extras from their take-a-penny leave-a-penny baskets and distributing them to Great War orphans. The man who later bopped Desmond James on the back of the head with a baton, Lord Sheriff William Fordfershireham, and taking him to his time in the stony lonesome was reviled for the rest of his days, he was.

Or Leonard Harold Oswalt who, as the queen paraded down the street of North Hemphenshire in celebrations of the Saint Swivens Spotted-Dick and Boiled Meat Feast day, was seen on a grassy knoll near a Royal Library, not saluting as Her Majesty passed. Leonard was arrested, of course, the next afternoon wearing a fake moustache hiding in London at a West End production of the musical “Cats” but had ignominy added to his jail-time when, famously, the well-known bawdy pub owner Jacob Rubenstubenhaminhold-On-Avonshirington made the “up your ass” gesture at him during his public arraignment. Whether he actually was trying to salute or not, whether he’d simply caught his arm up on a branch that moment and could not, would go down in kingdom history as “The Magic Lovely Shady Oak Tree Theory”.

Britain started it with Robin Hood but after a thousand years of empire, decided to keep their filching-princes rather harmless fun and silly. Their taste for blood finally slaked, they left the brutal gore-drenched lust for violent rebellion to the daughter-state, this American Republic, and so now, of course, here we are.