If bending is used as a verb here, what can this phrase possibly mean?
bending blue
As they stand these two words are virtually meaningless - it may be some kind of expression local to a particular area - and not one in the UK I would reckon. Maybe a forum contributor from some far flung region of the English speaking world will come up with a credible response.
Bending.....in a phrase such as "bending the rules" it's quite obvious what that word means and needs no explanation. As for the "blue" bit - well, that can have a variety of meanings, as you no doubt know.
As a wee bit of fun let's go all plural here - "blues"...and especially in a term which is very widely used here in the UK among members of the emergency services - mainly the Police Services, the Ambulance/Paramedic Services and the Fire an Rescue Service - and also the subsidiary orgnisations such as Mountain Rescue, Coastguard etc.
They are a very familiar sight out on an emergency bombing along like bats out of hell on their way to an incident, accident or whatever....even a cat stuck up a tree or some scroat with his head stuck between railings.
On the emergency vehicles the blue lights are flashing away and the sirens are wailing like banshees as they skillfully weave through the traffic in their impeccable way to the scene of the incident....all that is called "Blue and Twos" here in the UK. In police terms every emergency is referred to as an incident.
I think that is a throwback from the WW2 bombing blitzes in the UK. Every single bomb that fell was referred to as "an incident", especially one which caused wholesale destruction and loss of life. During WW2 a film was made called "Piccadilly Incident" - a sort of romantic/love story involving a British naval intelligence officer and a young girl in the Women's Naval Service (called WRENS) who first met when they collided in the absolute blackness of the blackout in central London and just as the air raid sirens were beginning to warble (the sirens were popularly called "warbling willies"). Rather than take shelter in the official air raid shelters the officer invites the girl to take "refuge" in his flat, just off Piccadilly, and which happened to be very close by. Although it would have been extremely dangerous to ignore the air raid warning and subsequent bombs (amazingly, so many people did at the time!) she agreed, and they groped their way there through the darkness. It all went on from there and not even a bomb landing in a nearby street (the "incident" in the film title) and which blew in all the windows and half the roof of the flat and most of the next street, they were lucky and escaped injury and simply went on with what was expected of each other. No sodding Luftwaffe bombs were going to stop their fun in that Piccadilly "incident".
I happen to have several mates in the Police Service - here in our local Lothian and Borders Force, the Strathclyde Police as well as in London's Metropolitan Police, the Thames Valley Police and the Kent Constabulary. All of them use the expression and when they say "It's a blues and twos call!" you know what they are going to do.
Bending.....in a phrase such as "bending the rules" it's quite obvious what that word means and needs no explanation. As for the "blue" bit - well, that can have a variety of meanings, as you no doubt know.
As a wee bit of fun let's go all plural here - "blues"...and especially in a term which is very widely used here in the UK among members of the emergency services - mainly the Police Services, the Ambulance/Paramedic Services and the Fire an Rescue Service - and also the subsidiary orgnisations such as Mountain Rescue, Coastguard etc.
They are a very familiar sight out on an emergency bombing along like bats out of hell on their way to an incident, accident or whatever....even a cat stuck up a tree or some scroat with his head stuck between railings.
On the emergency vehicles the blue lights are flashing away and the sirens are wailing like banshees as they skillfully weave through the traffic in their impeccable way to the scene of the incident....all that is called "Blue and Twos" here in the UK. In police terms every emergency is referred to as an incident.
I think that is a throwback from the WW2 bombing blitzes in the UK. Every single bomb that fell was referred to as "an incident", especially one which caused wholesale destruction and loss of life. During WW2 a film was made called "Piccadilly Incident" - a sort of romantic/love story involving a British naval intelligence officer and a young girl in the Women's Naval Service (called WRENS) who first met when they collided in the absolute blackness of the blackout in central London and just as the air raid sirens were beginning to warble (the sirens were popularly called "warbling willies"). Rather than take shelter in the official air raid shelters the officer invites the girl to take "refuge" in his flat, just off Piccadilly, and which happened to be very close by. Although it would have been extremely dangerous to ignore the air raid warning and subsequent bombs (amazingly, so many people did at the time!) she agreed, and they groped their way there through the darkness. It all went on from there and not even a bomb landing in a nearby street (the "incident" in the film title) and which blew in all the windows and half the roof of the flat and most of the next street, they were lucky and escaped injury and simply went on with what was expected of each other. No sodding Luftwaffe bombs were going to stop their fun in that Piccadilly "incident".
I happen to have several mates in the Police Service - here in our local Lothian and Borders Force, the Strathclyde Police as well as in London's Metropolitan Police, the Thames Valley Police and the Kent Constabulary. All of them use the expression and when they say "It's a blues and twos call!" you know what they are going to do.
With purple glow at even,
with crimson waves at dawn,
Cool bending blue of heaven.
O blue lakes pulsing on;
Also from May-Day Ode by Thackeray:
Swell, organ, swell your trumpet blast,
March, Queen and Royal pageant, march
By splendid aisle and springing arch
Of this fair Hall:
And see! above the fabric vast,
God's boundless Heaven is bending blue,
God's peaceful sunlight's beaming through,
And shines o'er all.
with crimson waves at dawn,
Cool bending blue of heaven.
O blue lakes pulsing on;
Also from May-Day Ode by Thackeray:
Swell, organ, swell your trumpet blast,
March, Queen and Royal pageant, march
By splendid aisle and springing arch
Of this fair Hall:
And see! above the fabric vast,
God's boundless Heaven is bending blue,
God's peaceful sunlight's beaming through,
And shines o'er all.
Bending blue....reading that poem you can so easily visualise what Thackeray visualised about his bending blue of the heavens...the huge semi orb of the skies above us.....and of course it has to be blue. The word "grey" hardly conjures up the same pleasant vision does it?
So it's all down to William Makepeace Thackeray. (He was only 52 when he died - the same age as Shakespeare was when he left this mortal coil so he had that added distinction). Thanks for that, Troy - I have this strange feeling that I should have known about those odes, but I didn't.
We never covered Thackeray at school (Scotland tends to have a different curriculum from England). To most people with any literary interests or knowledge over and above the superficial his name immediately brings to mind "Vanity Fair" and that wee minx Becky Sharp.
I remember seeing Thackeray's tomb in Chester Cathedral on an alleged litfest day out from Leeds uni and to look at the amazing Roman walls encircling the city centre and to see the amphitheatre there.
Chester, England - its very name signifies its Roman foundation in the year 79AD on the River Dee and right on the present day border with Wales......founded by the Romans in the same year in which Vesuvius blew its top back home in present day Italy, and destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. "Chester" in any British placename = "Castris" - a Roman fortress.....as in Manchester (Mancunium) and many more places in England, mostly. Chester itself - given the name Deva by the Romans.
So it's all down to William Makepeace Thackeray. (He was only 52 when he died - the same age as Shakespeare was when he left this mortal coil so he had that added distinction). Thanks for that, Troy - I have this strange feeling that I should have known about those odes, but I didn't.
We never covered Thackeray at school (Scotland tends to have a different curriculum from England). To most people with any literary interests or knowledge over and above the superficial his name immediately brings to mind "Vanity Fair" and that wee minx Becky Sharp.
I remember seeing Thackeray's tomb in Chester Cathedral on an alleged litfest day out from Leeds uni and to look at the amazing Roman walls encircling the city centre and to see the amphitheatre there.
Chester, England - its very name signifies its Roman foundation in the year 79AD on the River Dee and right on the present day border with Wales......founded by the Romans in the same year in which Vesuvius blew its top back home in present day Italy, and destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. "Chester" in any British placename = "Castris" - a Roman fortress.....as in Manchester (Mancunium) and many more places in England, mostly. Chester itself - given the name Deva by the Romans.