In all honesty though, he didn’t actually know what a Pooh bear was. His not-even-qualifying-as-benighted single mother was too poor to buy a television or books, or other devices on/in which A.A. Milne’s famous ursine character was likely to appear. But he had heard of Pooh bears.
What he thought was that they were Poo bears and that they pooed. Like, you could get baby dolls that pissed themselves. So why not a free-bowelled teddy? Eh?
Brian’s Mummy, Doris — for are not all fictional women called Doris? — was well aware of the situation. She’d tried everything, from saving up her Green Shield Stamps to peddling her portly pudendum around the town. Still ... not enough ackers for a Pooh.
The day before Christmas Eve [note date of posting] she was desperate. Just as she was tearing out her remaining single hair — which partly explains her lack of success with the last-named funding strategy — there came a Knock Upon The Door.
It was the telegram boy, for such they had in those days before blogs and emails and text messages and Twitting and suchlike. “Mrs Doris”, quoth he — for her name was indeed and unfortunately Mrs Doris Doris — “I have for thee, verily in my sack, a communication”, thereupon handing her a piece of yellowish paper.
EX-HUSBAND DEAD OF CONGENITAL SYLLEPSIS STOP CALL US FOR DETAILS OF INHERITANCE STOP BUGGREM BARSTEAD AND BAXTER SOLICITORS STOP
“The old git came good”, she almost said aloud in front of little Brian, who still believed his Dad to be farming capybaras Venezuela, and proceeded to the chambers of Messrs Buggrem Barstead and Baxter forthwith, there to receive a modest sum of money and many dozen bottles of Guinness, those being the last remains of Mr Arthur Doris, late of 57B Balls Pond Road, Islington, deceased intesticle — the man, not the road or the borough. Not yet anyway.
On her way home, she happened — for stories are like that — upon the shop of one Santa Cohen, bespoke toymaker to the stars, who informed her that, in return for either the money or the Guinness (judging them to be on about parity), he would indeed install a PSM (Patent Scatological Mechanism) — also known in the trade as an SPM (Sham-Poo Machine) — into an off-the-peg Pooh.
And so it was that, on Christmas Day, her wee son got his wish: A Bear of Very Little Brian.
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| “Colour me in!” said Pooh, as he raced to find the hands he’d accidentally chopped off the night before with a pizza cutter. “No wonder you’re shitting yourself”, said Tigger. |
