Friday 27 November 2009

A.A. Milne breaks it gently...


Yes, the time had come at last. Christopher Robin was going away to school. Nobody else in the forest knew exactly why or where he was going, all they knew was it had something to do with twice times and how to make things called ABC and where a place called Brazil is.

“Pooh, what do you like doing best in the world?”

“What I like best is me going to visit you, and you saying, how about a pot of honey?"


“I like that too. But what I like best is just doing nothing.”

“How do you do just nothing?”

“Well, it's when the grown-ups ask ‘what are you going to do?’ and you say 'nothing' and then you go out and do it.”

“I like that. Let's do it all the time!”

“You know something Pooh? I can’t do nothing any more.”


“You mean never again?”

“Well, not so much. Pooh, when I'm away just doing nothing will you come up here sometimes?”

“You mean alone? Just me?”

“Yes. And Pooh, promise you won't forget me, ever?”

“Oh I won't Christopher, I promise.”

“Not even when I'm a hundred?”

“How old shall I be then?”

“99, silly old bear.”

Wherever they go and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the forest, a little bear will always be waiting.

3 comments:

  1. Trying to find the transcript of this last chapter in Milne and Shephard's last book was a nightmare, because Disney have bought the entire rights to Winnie the Pooh, and have either managed to delete almost all the entries in favour of their disgusting 'Disneyfied' versions, or they have put tags onto the sites which cause a warning to come up, saying that your computor 'may be damaged' if you enter them, as if they were pornography. I hope this transcript is accurate, as it was pretty badly typed on the net.

    It's ironic that the subject matter is a sort of veiled warning about the outside world and all the adult horrors and pointless activity it contains, and it has been bought and controlled by an American corporation as huge and faceless as Disney.

    I (and just about every other British person, I would have thought) find it appalling that our childhood has been hi-jacked like this. I feel like asking for it all back, like Greece asking for the Elgin Marbles!

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  2. And there was I (like so many others) thinking that Disney himself had written the stories. Next you'll be telling me that he didn't write Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Jungle Book, or Robin Hood.

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  3. I worked in Orlando for a few weeks some years ago (right where Tiger Woods lives now), and I would listen to the tour-guides having breakfast at around 7.00 AM. One would say, "I'm doing The Rodent today", and the others would groan with sympathy.

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