The Bear Necessities

Every Boy Needs a Bear

Me, my rOtring™ art, my Toshiba music centre, my JVC miniature tv/radio, and the ever-present Bobby Cook, Purley, Surrey, 1982.

I’ve always wondered about the importance of teddy bears for boys, mostly for boys anyway. Why do they become such an important part of growing up for some of us?

I don’t mind admitting that I’d be absolutely devastated if anything ever happened to Bobby, my white polar bear. I’ve had him since the day I was born. Naturally, I refer to ‘him’ rather than ‘it,’ of course.

I’m not the only one, either. I remember watching a tv program about the famous English Poet Laureate John Betjeman, who owned a beloved teddy bear named Archibald Ormsby-Gore, or “Archie.” By all accounts, Betjeman took Archie everywhere—even to Oxford University—and the bear was famously reported to be in his arms when he died in 1984.

I’m not sure I would go that far. I mean, maybe I’d summon him if I was on my last legs, but I do remember the sheer and utter panic that ensued when I realized on the journey home in my parents’ car at the age of six that Bobby wasn’t with us. Bobby was still at Uncle Bill and Auntie Carole’s house in Edmonton, London, while we were already 40 minutes into our journey home. My mother assured me that when we got home, she would call them on the telephone and ask them to send him in the post.

The thought of my Bobby… in a box in the English postal system was more than I could handle. I absolutely freaked out! I’m sure I still suffer from PTSD from the trauma. Anyway, as it turned out, my parents were good enough to turn the car around and rescue the bear.

The rubber Jumbo disintegrated eventually.

The ubiquitous bear was with me on my very first day at Stanley Park Infants School. I have a few memories of that, in fact, for some reason, I seem to remember a hell of a lot, so before these memories dissipate in the mists of time, I’m going to jot them down here...

Being abandoned by my mother on the first day of school seemed pretty traumatic. I remember very clearly being marched to a classroom, being shown to a little desk and chair, and then listening intently to our teacher during our first lesson, but being more intent on the pool of liquid that was gradually making its way under the desks and across the floor towards my shoes. I can remember the embarrassment of the poor little girl who had been too scared to tell the teacher that she really, really needed to go to the bathroom. I remember being pretty embarrassed myself when it turned out that I was the only one in the class who didn’t know how to tie his shoe laces, and having to stand at the front of the class while another child showed me how. I can even remember the boy’s name, Tardi, a Japanese boy, but at that age I knew nothing about Japan. I just loved the shape of his eyes and wished mine could look the same.

Every Boy Needs a Bear!

Another thing I evidently could not do was spell my forename. Miss Bellchamber (great name) said to my mother, one day after school, that she thought it was about time I learned to write more than just ‘Cook’ on my school books. She also told her that she should consider telling me to stop bringing Bobby, my white polar bear, to school. I was beside myself. Bobby was my constant companion, and after a few quiet words with my younger brother, Martin, I persuaded him to let me take Bill, his brown bear, to school instead.

As a result of this newcomer’s visitation, Miss Bellchamber went to great lengths to explain to me that it wasn’t that she particularly had anything against Bobby, but that I shouldn’t feel the need to bring any bears to school.

Bob’s groovy sixties approach to fashion.

A few days in, we were all taught how to tell the time with the big clock on the classroom wall, and I remember the joy of Friday afternoons and the rush to get to the toy cupboard to choose the best toys to play with, which was our end-of-the-week treat. Plasticine was something that fascinated me immensely, the smell and the feel of it, and it prompted me to break off a tiny little piece and smuggle it home in my pocket. This was followed by a sleepless night with the guilt of having stolen it, and the confession I made to my mother in the morning. She told me that if I put it back the next day, she was sure nobody would notice… or even care!

The other incredibly guilty and humiliating moment I had was when my Man from U.N.C.L.E. Luger was confiscated from me in the playground, and I was reprimanded for bringing a gun to school. This seems pretty fair enough in retrospect.

There was a particular obsession with collecting Bubblegum trading cards by most of the boys, and I bought mine from the sweet shop next to the school with the pocket money that my grandparents gave me every week. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. cards, James Bond 007: Thunderball cards, American Civil War cards that had replicas of Confederate banknotes and hideously gory illustrations of the atrocities of war. Bodies impaled on spikes, etc., etc. My favourites were the Topps Batman cards though, and they led to a lot of renditions of Batman and Robin in my schoolbooks.

There was a boy who used to bring photos and even clippings of film frames of the Thunderbirds tv series to school. I think his father must have worked on some aspect of the show. I can’t remember his name, but there was another boy called Rupert who would come to school with his father in the morning and bring mechanical, clockwork toys with him. He always had a lot of earwax poking out of his ears, which I found particularly disconcerting. It’s funny the things you remember; anyway, we’d all stand around watching the toys in action before school started, and before his father would bid farewell and carry them away with him. I got the feeling he was a single-parent child in a house devoid of Q-tips.

A special memory was sitting with the other children under the shade of a tree in the adjacent park on a hot summer’s day and being read excerpts of a book called ‘My Naughty Little Sister’, by our teacher. Summer in those days always used to seem hotter and sunnier.

Before we became older and relocated to the junior school next door, we had much simpler games. One that now seems pretty cosmic related to a U-shaped nail embedded in the tarmac in one corner of the playground. I started something called ‘The Magic Horseshoe club’, where we’d sit cross-legged in a circle around the nail with 4 or 5 other boys and girls. We’d close our eyes and imagine that we could travel to various places in our minds and describe those places to each other as we did so.

Junior school games were much more competitive. There was ‘British Bulldog’, a classic playground game that involved runners crossing the playground without being caught by the “bulldogs” in the middle. Anyone caught joined the bulldogs, making the next round more challenging until only one winner remained.

The game of ‘Flick’ involved flicking a bubblegum card at a row of other cards that were leaning against a wall, and hoping to knock them over onto a pile to claim them. This was a way of gambling the cards we owned to achieve winning a full set. The downside being that they usually had bent, damaged corners if you did win them.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - This looks like an ancient artifact now, but… I guess it is.

The girls had a game called ‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board’, which involved a volunteer who lies flat on her back, totally still. Her friends would kneel around her, placing only their index and middle fingers under her. They would start to chant, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” And on the last count, they all lift up, effortlessly raising the girl into the air.

That was pretty weird, but get this for weird… there was a really bizarre boy’s game that involved a steel metal hair comb and a willing participant. The idea was for someone to hold their arm out as far as they could, palm down. Then another kid would wack his hand pretty forcefully with the teeth of the comb, just above the knuckles… and here’s the really twisted part. The onlookers would then swing him around and around by the other arm until the centrifugal force pushed the blood out of the holes that the comb had just made. (I promise you, I’m not making this up!) I think there were bonus points for getting a splash of blood on the classroom walls. I mean… WTF!?!?

Anyhow, I’ve strayed pretty far from anecdotes about the Bobster (er… Bobby), but to finish up, he still ‘lives’ (for want of a better word) in Purley, Surrey, and I had this photo taken by Sasha, last time we visited. He’s looking pretty chipper, despite what had transpired a few years ago after my Mum decided to give him a wash and put him in the spinner. She pulled him out and all the filling must have disintegrated and congealed, making him look like a bear version of Tollund Man from the Scandinavian peat bog!

After this tragedy, Mum gave him new filling, and he has a few stitch scars resulting from the operation, but he’s looking pretty good for his age!

Did I really just write a post about a teddy bear?