69 Years Young

My dad's bear, Rupert... working those William Morris patterns like a pro.

Did I Just Take Drugs?

Happy Birthday Rupert!

66 years ago, during WWII, my grandmother made a teddy bear each for my father and my uncle. My father's Rupert is still with him today.




Ruper has lost his button eyes a couple of times, all of his fur, and some of his stitched nose. As you can see by some shaky stitching, his head almost completely came off once.

We undressed him Christmas Day for his new outfit, purchased in Chinatown by my mother. Mark fortified him with some Prosecco.

And here he is, in his chair, on my parents' mantel, before the portrait of Count Basie. Rupert in all his silken splendour. He certainly deserves it and I think he carries it off quite well.

Oh... and it's my dad's birthday too!

For the Teddy Lovers

Archibald

The bear that sits above my bed
A doleful bear he is to see;
From out his drooping pear-shaped head
His woollen eyes look into me.
He has no mouth, but seems to say:
"They'll burn you on the Judgement Day."

Those woollen eyes, the things they've seen
Those flannel ears, the things they've heard -
Among horse-chestnut fans of green,
The fluting of an April bird,
And quarrelling downstairs until
Doors slammed at Thirty One West Hill.

The dreaded evening keyhole scratch
Announcing some return below
The nursery landing's lifted latch,
The punishment to undergo
Still I could smooth those half-moon ears
And wet that forehead with my tears.

Whatever rush to catch a train,
Whatever joy there was to share
Of sounding sea-board, rainbowed rain,
Or seaweed-scented Cornish air,
Sharing the laughs, you still were there,
You ugly, unrepentant bear.

When nine, I hid you in a loft
And dared not let you share my bed;
More aged now he is to see,
His woollen eyes have thinner thread,
But still he seems to say to me,
In double-doom notes, like a knell:
"You're half a century nearer Hell."

Self-pity shrouds me in a mist,
And drowns me in my self-esteem.
The freckled faces I have kissed
Float by me in a guilty dream.
The only constant, sitting there,
Patient and hairless, is a bear.

And if an analyst one day
Of school of Adler, Jung or Freud
Should take this aged bear away,
Then, oh my God, the dreadful void!
its draughty darkness could but be
Eternity, Eternity.

by John Betjeman


Archibald Ormsby-Gore, better known as Archie, was the teddy-bear of Sir John Betjeman, sometime British Poet Laureate. When he attended Oxford University in the 1920s, Betjeman brought Archie with him and, as a result, Archie became the model for Aloysius, Sebastian Flyte's bear in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited. Archie and Jumbo (a stuffed elephant) were in Betjeman's arms when he died in 1984.

The picture is of one of my bears, Elgy (hard "g").

Teddies Online

My teddies have become dedicated followers of Bob's Diary. I fear they now find their lives sitting on my boudoir sofa quite boring. The pressure is on.

Apologies (and Hopeful That I Don't Wake up Tomorrow with a Mouthful of Plush and Batting)

Apparently I might have worried some teddy bear lovers out there, who thought I might be serious about putting the bears away in a cupboard. Of course I could never do such a thing. I speak sternly sometimes to keep them in line. It doesn't work.

But for more explanation on the bears... you see the the one in the pink dress, the only one actually clothed? Well that little dress was made for me by my grandma when I was a baby. It's the softest pink brushed cotton with tiny white polka dots. She was a trained seamstress and made a lot of clothes for everyone in the family. I love the detail of the smocking which you can see in this picture of the bear wearing it. I think he quite likes it too. Click on the picture for a larger view of the delicate work.

And as for other teddies, I took this picture a while ago of some teddies on the move through Stratford. They were temporarily parked at the time, but obviously ready to roar off on another road trip. I love the huge aviator kind of shades on the big one.

Two Things that Start with T: Teddies and Trouble

So, in preparation for my long-term house guests, I've been moving things around in my place. And one of the smaller moves was taking the teddy bears from the spare bedroom and putting them on the little sofa under the window in my bedroom. Every morning now I wake up to five sets of curious eyes. I'm not sure this is going to work. They might end up on the top shelf of my cupboard. Either that or I really have to start sleeping - and waking - on my right side. Yes, yes, they're cute. But they're trouble too. I mean... look at the size of their paws. Huge.