Tuesday, March 2

Last night Ball minor arrived home and admitted to playing football after school.

His school trousers have obviously been used as goal posts, as they have enough mud on them to grow potatoes. So they get washed, after which two five pound notes are found in the washing machine.

Fortunately they are in one piece and they are dried with great care. Today he visits a Queens Park sandwich bar in his lunch hour, and offers to pay with one of the notes. The shopkeeper eyes the fiver suspiciously and refuses to accept it as he believes it to be a forgery. Ball minor gets out the other note, which the shopkeeper accepts. His mate asks him what was going on and young Ball explained that they are not forgeries. But the shopkeeper has a point because the money had been laundered.

• TWO of our weekly papers are about to be put to bed when one of our eagled-eyed sub editors pipes up about the chief constable of Bedfordshire Police Gillian Parker.

In both papers we had the story that Mrs Parker would have to decide whether to stay on in her position when her contract runs out this year.

The sub decides to tell us at the last minute that he saw a clip on a news programme the night before saying that Mrs Parker had made her mind up that she was leaving the force.

Scrambling to a computer we all crowd round to watch the news with the thought that we may be working a bit later than expected. As clear as anything it said that Julie Spence, Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police, was to step down. Phew.