The Adventures of Tottles the Bear

For Alice and Emma

Tottles learns to play the guitar

Then he tried the bass drums. That sounded like an elephant plodding along and Tottles wasn't an elephant - he was a BIG BAD BEAR.

Next he tried the recorder. He played One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow ...

``But I'm not a man'' he said, ``I'm a bear.'' And it wasn't even one man and a bear, it was one man and a dog. So he decided not to play the recorder.

Then he tried the violin. But that sounded like a cat on a hot tin roof. And he said ``I'm not a cat, I'm a BIG BAD BEAR.''

Next he tried the piano, but that sounded like a pony trotting along. And he wasn't a pony, he was a bear, and a BIG BAD BEAR at that.

He decided to give up playing musical instruments because he thought he had tried all of them. Actually there were lots of others like the xylophone and the triangle, but it didn't matter to him because he was really a silly old bear and he didn't really know much about musical instruments.

So he forgot all about playing a musical instrument until one day he was walking through town and he came across a music shop with a big window and in the window was a big bear sized musical instrument. So he went into the shop and asked the man there what it was and he said it was a guitar. He asked if he could play it and the man said ``Yes.'' He fetched it out of the window and gave it to Tottles to try out.

``What do I do?'' asked Tottles.

``First of all you put your left paw at the top and your right paw in the middle'' said the man.

So Tottles tried that, but no sound came out.

``What do I do now?'' asked Tottles, because he was a silly old bear and didn't have much of a clue about how to play a guitar. He only knew the right way to unscrew a honey pot!

Then the man said ``You move your right paw up and down'' but by accident Tottles moved his left paw up and down and that didn't make any sound come out.

``No, no'' said the man, ``that's the wrong paw.''

So Tottles tried the other paw and this time some sound came out. It sounded like a bear strolling along in the country. Then Tottles said ``Well this is rather boring. How do I make another sound?''

``You move your left paw'' said the man. But he moved the right paw and and that didn't make much difference to the sound.

The man said ``no no no, move the other paw.'' So he tried that and the sound changed. This time it sounded like a bear jumping. He even tried playing some Flamenco guitar, which made it sound like a Spanish bear. Eventually he enjoyed playing the guitar so much that he decided to buy it. When he reached home he got out his guitar and he made up a Tottles song. It went like this:

Tottles was a silly bear
He got honey everywhere
Tottles was a sticky bear
He got honey in his hair

Chorus:
Tottles, Tottles, Tottles
Oh Tottles
...

Tottles goes abroad

He went by air to the Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris. He visited Paris and took a very fast TGV train from the Gare de Lyon. He thought that TGV stood for Tottles Goes Very fast so he was very happy to go by train. He arrived in Avignon where he stopped to have a look around, go on the old bridge and do all the sort of things that bears like to do, including eating a very large honey-flavoured ice cream.

Next he had to wait for the shuttle bus that was going to take him from Avignon to Arles. He waited and waited and waited but the shuttle bus wouldn't turn up. So he phoned the hotel and complained to the hotel manager with a very growly bear sort of a voice. The manager was very frightened and promised another one straight away.

``Je suis tres sorry,'' he said.

So Tottles waited again. He had a huge bear-sized pizza with a dollop of honey to keep him going, even though there was to be a bear-sized meal waiting for him at the hotel (but Tottles didn't know about this). Eventually the bus arrives and Tottles got on. He was the only one on the bus because everyone else was afraid to get on with a big bad bear, so they had to wait for the next one.

When the bus arrived at the hotel, the manager welcomed him and offered him a large meal in recompense for his long wait. Although he was a full bear after his pizza, he was also a very greedy bear, so he accepted the meal gladly and ate it all up. After that he feel soundly asleep in his bed because he had had so much to eat.

Tottles goes shopping

He thought ``Perhaps they store a lot of honey in that warehouse. It's certainly big enough to keep a lot of honey.'' He licked his lips and thought ``Yum, yum, yum.'' So he decided to stop his car in the big car park outside and walk in to see if they did sell honey.

The lady behind the counter said ``Can I see your trade card, please?''

``What trade card?'' asked Tottles.

``The one that lets you enter this store,'' said the lady.

``But I don't have one,'' said Tottles.

``What is you trade?'' asked the lady.

Tottles thought for a short while. ``I'm a honey buyer,'' he said.

So she gave him a form to fill in. He wrote ``Hunny biyer'' in his own inimitable spelling in the big box on the form and signed it with a sticky honey paw print to prove that he bought honey and also because he couldn't spell `Tottles'!

``That'll do nicely,'' said the lady; fortunately she was not very good at spelling either. She gave him a temporary card and asked him to sign the list of today's customers. All the subsequent customers complained because he signed it with another big sticky paw print and they all got sticky hands as well.

He made for the honey section but on the way he stopped to have a look at a dress for Tutu because he was quite a thoughtful bear really. Unfortunately he got sticky paw prints all over the dresses. Several other customers reached the check-out with their purchases before they realised how sticky they were. A lady tried on a dress but it was all sticky inside because it was the one Tottles liked best. When she tried to take it off she couldn't because it was so sticky. The assistants in the shop said she would have to buy it because they thought she had put the honey on the dress. She was very annoyed!

Fortunately Tottles was in the honey section by then and he was tasting every pot.

``Mmmmmmmm,'' he said, ``these are all very good.''

He tried the English honey, the Greek honey, the Australian honey, the EC honey, produced by more than one country. It was very hard to choose which was best so he had to try all of them several times. In the end he decided to buy one of every pot and two of the Greek honey because that was especially good.

When he reached the check-out, the man there noticed that the pots were only half full. ``I'm very sorry,'' he said, ``but we can offer a discount because the pots aren't full.'' Tottles was very happy with this because he had eaten the honey already.

But when he got home Tutu said Tottles was a very naughty bear and she made him send the money he hadn't paid to the shop in recompense together with a note saying how sorry he was for the misunderstanding. She also ate most of the rest of the honey herself, so Tottles was still a hungry bear even after he had been shopping.

Tottles has a party

Just then his tummy started to rumble. Then he had another bright idea. "I'll have a honey party," he thought So he went to a honey shop to buy some honey. He decided to buy a whole hamper of honey because he wanted a big party. The man in the honey shop slipped a large bill under one of the honey pots to cover the cost of all the honey.

He staggered back home with the hamper on his back. But the hamper was so heavy that he decided he must eat some of the honey to make it lighter. Also he thought he should try some of the honey before the party, just to may sure it was alright. So he sat down on a bench and tried some. It was very good, so he tried some more. "Yum Yum," he said to himself.

Then he thought, "what if the other pots aren't the same sort of honey?" He decided he had better try a little bit of all the honey pots just to make sure they were all alright. He tried a little bit from each pot. However even Tottles couldn't manage to eat all the honey, so there was still some left for the party.

Tottles rather liked the honey, so he decided to hide it instead of giving it away at the party. Since there was so much honey, he had to hide it all over the house. He even had to hide some in his size 13 Wellington boots which had been especially made for him. He also hid one pot in the garden.

Instead of giving away honey at the party he decided to make it a bring a honey pot party. He invited his girlfriend Tutu and his best friend, Tuttles, and lots of other friends and relations.

On the day of the party Tottles prepared the house by giving it a good spring clean, because Tutu was very fussy about cleanliness and Tottles wanted to impress her. But he was very careful to make sure that all the honey was still well hidden.

The first guests started to arrive. They put their honey pots on the table in the study. Tottles offered them some of the honey that the first guest had brought. When everyone had arrived they all started to watch a Superbear III video with Louise Honey.

Meanwhile Tottles tiptoed off to the table with all the honey on it and tried as many pots as he could. Just after that, one of the guests needed the toilet so he went to look for it. He didn't know where to go, and whilst searching he knocked over Tottles' Wellington boots. He discovered the pot of honey inside one of them and a piece of old crumpled paper right at the bottom of the boot.

"Oh look," he cried, "Tottles has prepared a honey hunt for everyone!" Just then the video finished and all the other guests came out into the hall and said "Hooray for Tottles". Tottles came out of the study with a huge honey mustache to see what was going on. But the guests had already started hunting high and low for any honey that could be found. "I've found one!" shouted a guest. "And there's one here too," cried another guest.

Try as he could, Tottles couldn't stop the guests from finding all the honey in the house, and eating up most of it as well, since there were so many of them. He didn't stand a chance.

When the honey hunt had finished all the guests started to leave. They said it was one of the best parties they had ever been to.

After all the guests had left, Tottles thought, "what am I going to do? There is no honey in the whole house!" But then he remembered "Ah yes, they is one pot of honey left in the garden." So he put on his very sticky boots (some of the honey had leaked) and went into the garden to console himself.

As he was about to take the first paw lick, one of the guests popped his head out of the back door and said, "sorry, I forgot to give you this." He handed Tottles the crumpled piece of paper. "Oh, and by the way, I didn't get any honey. May I have that pot". Before Tottles could reply, the guest had snatched the honey and was leaving.

Tottled opened up the crumpled piece of paper. On it was the bill. "Oh no," he thought, "what am I going to do about this?" But it had been a good party and he had had rather a lot of honey, so he decided to sleep on it.

Next day he was in a grumpier mood and decided to remove the guest from his Christmas list. But he stayed they best of friends with everyone else and they all thought "what a jolly good bear Tottles is."

The guest removed from the Christmas list cannot be named for legal reasons under Bear law

The End

See some of Tottles' distant friends:

• A. G. Bear
• Bibi the Honeybear (moving and 3-D pictures!)
• Billy Bear
• Guardian Angel Bears
• Paddington Bear
• Papa Bear - Web Advent Calendar
• Pooh's Corner
• Pudsey Bear
• Rupert Bear
• Winnie the Pooh

See also:

• Teddy Bear U.K., a Web site dedicated solely to British Bears.
• Teddy Bears from Oxford.
• Teddy Bears at Hamleys toyshop, London.
• Teddy Bear Museums from the Great Teddy Bear Hug (commercial).
• The Teddy Bear Museum, Stratford-on-Avon, England.