In which the truth about the 100 Acre Wood is revealed

Michaelston is a capital fellow and one of those coves whose company is most agreeable, whether it is time spent in companionable silence or developing a thesis on the rightness of the ‘Called Timed Out’ law and how Umpires seem to be getting younger.  We’d first met pretending to be other people.  It was the mid 70s and I’d managed to slip out for the day and had got to The Oval when I had found myself next to the most frightful bore.  In an attempt to shut down conversation I pretended to be the San Marino Naval Attaché and with much arm waving and calling out to Saint Agatha every time another bouncer was unleashed I fended off idle chit chat rather better than the English batsmen did the assault Messrs Holding, Roberts et al.  On the other side of the said bore was the fellow who I now know to be Michaelston but at the time was pretending to the Head of State for the newly independent Republic of Mahali Popote and did not understand what was being said to him.  It worked, the cad between left and after a brief and confusing exchange in which I tried to find out how things were going in Sub-Saharan Africa and he wondered if we were thinking of joining NATO all pretence was off and we fell to amiable discussions on the nature of things.

 

 

Time passes on but friendship endures.  We had fallen back to the old and reliable topic of how the world was going to hell in a hand cart.  Was a time we agreed when the arrival of yet another crop of West Indian fast bowlers would have any sporting team, and not just cricketers, phoning in sick or remembering an appointment rather than face them; the world not be right till that happened again.  Michaelston had just had grandchildren inflicted on him, added to this that, to his mind, the present crop of children’s entertainers let lose to fill young minds with garish primary coloured overalls were clearly in the pay of some Communistic junta and the description of the characters and plots of any show you choose to name showed the influence of strong narcotics.  He concluded it would be better if young minds were filled with tales of respectable river bank dwelling creatures or the works of AA Milne.

 

 

I hate it when I have to be the one to tarnish the cherished image of a fellow but that is when friendships are forged in the fire of truth.  ‘Sorry old man’, I said.  ‘But Winnie the Pooh was a Red.’  Well the silence that followed was more deafening that all the din made at the announcement of ‘seconds.’  Eventually Michaelston, using that tone reserved for elderly relatives who now believe, against all evidence, they are the Emperor of China enquired if I was sure.  I confirmed my certainty.  ‘But surely he was a patriot?  Captain in the Home Guard and all that? Stuttered Michaelston.  ‘So was that cove Wintringham’ I explained, set up the LDV training place at Osterley Park and he was as Red as a pillar box – commanded the International Brigades at Jarama when not otherwise engaged.’

 

 

I could see that this was not going to be enough to convince my chum I was not more than ‘in the pink’, after all, I had once bought shared a taxi with a cove from Managua but this did not make me a member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front  nor grant me a fondness for gallo pinto – whatever it is.  I took a deep breath and began my lecture.

 

 

‘Remember the bear chappie being taken down stairs in the opening scenes?’ Michaelston did.  ‘Head thumping on each step, knows something is wrong but can’t for the life of him work out what it is - clear metaphor for the urban proletariat seeking class consciousness, they know the system ain’t fair but don’t know why.’  ‘Oh come on old man’ injected Michaelston ‘what about Piglet?’  ‘Alas for the little pink prole, never achieves class consciousness which is why he is nervous all the time’  I countered. ‘As for Eeyore, well the poor duffer is the rural peasantry who know they are just part of the flotsam of the dialectical process; there time has been and gone – that’s why he is such a miserable cove’

 

You don’t often see someone having their world view changed so I ploughed on.  ‘Christopher Robin, the Bourgeoisie, the very model of the military-industrial complex – always got his gun with him and controls the whole thing.  Look how the intellectuals are dependant on him.  It is not accident that the bird always needs Christopher Robin’s help with the trickery words – a clear message to the young mind about Owl’s function.   Rabbit represents the bureaucracy, always needing set things down on paper and order everyone about  and what corruption, remember his friends and relation.’ 

 

 

Michaelston, now utterly dazed, offered up ‘And Tigger’ in the same way English bowlers used to go before the great Sir Vivian Richards, more in hope than expectation.  ‘An utterly useless fellow – he is the upper classes don’t you know!  Look at the way he bounced on everyone and especially poor Eeyore’s thistles and as for that hussy Kanga, one of Mrs Pankhurst’s wilful women, I believe it was a struggle not to get that Shepard fellow not to draw her with a white, purple and green sash.’

 

 

After a longer pause that I thought absolutely necessary, Michaelston carefully stated ‘You’ve given this rather a lot of thought old boy.’  I came clean, ‘Not me old boy, Pitmiddle, stationed with him once, Cambridge man.  Some rum ideas but a decent bridge player and a devil in a scrap.’

 

Fortunately the cheese trolley came at that point and the embarrassed silence was soon filled with the happy sound of butter being applied to crackers and rogue pieces of cheddar making a bid for freedom when attacked inexpertly with a knife.  Matters soon settled down to the safer topic of how we had proper weather when we were young and how the seasons knew there place and didn’t happen when they felt like it.  Makes you think though.