“Please Take Care of this Bear. Thank You.” The Bear from Darkest Peru
“Please Take Care of this Bear. Thank You.”
The Bear from Darkest Peru
The bear we all love most isn’t Winnie the Pooh, despite decades of Disney filling our eyes and ears with mushy sentimentality, it is a little lost bear from Peru called Paddington. And for my kids it was a friendly and slightly dense friend who was always in trouble of a mild but baffling kind of way. Paddington gets his name from the station where he was found and he’s a stowaway and a refugee. He gets taken in by the Brown family and his gentle adventures with oodles of marmalade sandwiches and his little cardboard suitcase. Paddington dressed in duffel coat, battered hat and wellington boots is a really well loved children’s character.
The Politest of Bears
So it is with sadness I record that his creator Michael Bond has passed away at the grand old age of 91. Bond had a colourful life, writing from an early age and surviving a Nazi bombing during an air raid in the south. Bond’s early memories of the Kindertransport of child refugees influenced the creation of the character and so did his memory of his father, who was so polite he wore his hat while swimming, so like Paddington he could raise it politely to any lady.
A Bygone Age
Now that’s an extreme example of politeness, especially as fewer and fewer of us wear bonnets anymore, and fewer and fewer of us raise them to ladies or tip them to others. But the gentle habits of generations are not lightly cast aside. We were established in 1890 as you may remember and are proud to carry on the history of service and quality. We try hard to maintain our historic standards and you can try our Scottish Bazaar which features stunning local products at some very fine prices. I’ll tip my hat to that and no need of a hard stare from Paddington.
