non wild things

Written in response to unleashing monsters

I searched my memories for wild things or wild happenings but couldn’t think of any until I remembered one of my favourite childhood songs – “the teddy bears picnic” although this hardly constitutes anything really wild.

The teddy bears’ picnic words by Jimmy Kennedy in 1932, music by John W. Bratton in1907

If you go down to the woods today

You’re sure of a big surprise.

If you go down to the woods today

You’d better go in disguise.

For ev’ry bear that ever there was

Will gather there for certain, because

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Ev’ry teddy bear who’s been good

Is sure of a treat today.

There’s lots of marvelous things to eat

And wonderful games to play.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees

They’ll hide and seek as long as they please

Cause that’s the way the teddy bears have their picnic.

If you go down to the woods today

You’d better not go alone.

It’s lovely down in the woods today

But safer to stay at home.

For ev’ry bear that ever there was

Will gather there for certain, because

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears

The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today

Watch them, catch them unawares

And see them picnic on their holiday.

See them gaily gad about

They love to play and shout;

They never have any care;

At six o’clock their mummies and daddies,

Will take them home to bed,

Because they’re tired little teddy bears.

So this post is really about childhood memories.

When I was about 6 my class at kindergarten went on a teddy bears picnic. My teddy bear had a cough pill tin for a lunch box filled with miniature cheese sandwiches.

Later my sister and I were given a small bear each. Hers was brown and mine was white and I called mine “Syrian Bear”. Both bears had joints so you could move their arms and legs. They also had a small tail and by moving their tails you could move their heads. Syrian Bear lived in my dolls house – a Georgian style house with a colonnaded entrance and a balcony. You could take the whole of the front off.

Inside were 4 rooms. Upper left was the bedroom, upper right the sitting room, lower left the dining room and lower right the kitchen. Dad papered the walls with pages from a wallpaper sample book. The curtains were made of the same material as my school uniform summer dress. One year in a Christmas cracker I got a miniature stags head resplendent with horns and this adorned the wall above the fireplace in the dolls house sitting room. A friend of mine had an antique dolls house and she gave me a couple of pieces of furniture, one of which was a high backed chair in faded blue silk. I remember re-covering it in pink satin but the glue left hard patches under the satin and it never really looked as glamorous as I had hoped. Judith also gave me a miniature flower vase; about the size of a slim thimble it was made of clear glass with dark blue and red vertical stripes. At some point I also acquired a pair of miniature bronze candlesticks (I found one the other day which I will put in Enchanteur’s magic bag). Syrian Bear slept in the lid of small box on a piece of artificial fur fabric. The pictures on the walls were torn from those sheets of faux Christmas postage stamps. That was the only room which had a fitted carpet. I think the sitting room just had a mat. The dining room and kitchen were by far the best equipped. The dining room had a dining table and chairs and a sideboard. The kitchen had a cooker and storage units which were stuffed with miniature cutlery, crockery and plates of food. If you have ever read Beatrix Potter’s “tale of two bad mice” you will remember that the mice steal plates of food from the dolls house – those plates of food were just like the ones in my dolls house kitchen. Later Syrian Bear was joined by a small white cat which slept in a small wicker picnic hamper. As I acquired more furniture there was no longer enough room in the dolls house so Dad made me a two-roomed annexe from an old orange box. Sometimes I used to borrow my brother’s wooden train set and would load SB, the cat, other visitors like my sister’s bear and all the food, crockery and cutlery in the cat’s picnic hamper, into the wagons and take them all off on train journeys around the bedroom on wet days or out in the garden on sunny days.

Trains of thought led me to chains of thought and other childhood memories.

The song ‘Nellie The Elephant’ was written in 1957 by Ralph Butler and Peter Hart.

To Bombay A traveling circus came

They brought an intelligent elephant

And Nellie was her name

One dark night

She slipped her iron chain

And off she ran to Hindustan

And was never seen again

Ooooooooooooo…

Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk

And said goodbye to the circus

Off she went with a trumpety-trump

Trump, trump, trump

Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk

And trundled back to the jungle

Off she went with a trumpety-trump

Trump, trump, trump

Night by night

She danced to the circus band

When Nellie was leading the big parade

She looked so proud and grand

No more tricks For Nellie to perform

They taught her how to take a bow

And she took the crowd by storm

The head of the herd was calling

Far, far away

They met one night in the silver light

On the road to Mandalay

So Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk

And said goodbye to the circus

Off she went with a trumpety-trum

Trump, trump, trump

Ooooooooooooo…

Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk

And said goodbye to the circus

Off she went with a trumpety-trump

Trump, trump, trump

Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk

And trundled back to the jungle

Off she went with a trumpety-trump

Trump, trump, trump.

I often wondered what a circus elephant would pack in a trunk – my guess is posters and post cards of all the performances she had participated in and all the places she had visited while with the circus, along with some bits of her costumes and photos. Maybe she kept a journal too ….

by Traveller