Along the Wey

After our adventure with the pirate grandcubs, Grizzly, Polar and I spent some more lovely summer days on the River Wey.  It is much smaller than the Thames with fewer boats on it.  We could pass a whole morning or afternoon without seeing any other boats.  When there were others, they seemed either to be crewed by friendly people who shared the big locks with us and gave Polar and Grizzly good advice about where to moor and what tricky bits to look out for, or they were what I named silly boats.  

The silly boats were the same shape as Uppie but shorter and they were full of noisy people.  The crews of the silly boats didn't try to steer a neat course along the river, like Polar and Grizzly do, but would weave from side to side and, sometimes, even run into other silly boats.  The human cubs on the silly boats were allowed to climb all over them and hang off the sides, something that the pirate cubs had been far too sensible to do.  Grizzly and Polar did their best to stay out of their way.

One very warm day we reached a town called Godalming.  I could see from Grizzly's special waterways map that this meant we had gone as far south as a boat like Uppie could possibly go.  Grizzly and Polar turned Uppie right round so the bow was pointing north before going to explore the town.  I decided to sneak ashore too but only for a very quick look at a very pretty big barge moored near us.

When Polar and Grizzly got back, we set off down the river.  I wondered if we would go back up the Thames to Sonning and, if we did, whether Polar and Grizzly might think I ought to get off there and go back in my tree. 

'I must tell them I'm a real bear!' I said to myself.

When your animal friends decide they love and trust you enough to tell you they are real, we don't stand in front of you and jump about and talk to you, as we know that might look very strange and scare you.  Instead, we wait until you are asleep and then we whisper it into your ear, so it's like a dream. 

That night, I waited until Polar and Grizzly had gone to bed and were asleep, before sneaking into their cabin.  Very, very carefully I climbed up the covers until I was next to Grizzly's ear.  I started whispering to him but I must have accidently tickled Grizzly's ear as he started twitching, so I had to run away back to my cushion before I could tell Polar, in case he woke up.  I didn't know if my special animal whispering would work on him or not, firstly because he is a grown-up and it's usually only done with human cubs, and secondly because old humans often have poor hearing.  I had to wait and see.

In the morning, when Grizzly came into the galley to make Polar a cup of tea, I sat perfectly still on my cushion and watched him.

'Hello Sonning!' he said.  'How are you?'

I still stayed perfectly still.

'You could do with some trousers, couldn't you?'

I almost jumped and skipped at that, because one of the things I had whispered in Grizzly's ear was that I wanted some proper boat bear clothes.  I didn't jump and skip, of course, because I hadn't told Polar I was real yet, and I was worried that if Grizzly told her, she would think he was not very well.

He put out two bowls of cereals - one for himself and one for Polar - but put some extra nuts and berries in the food in Polar's bowl which I knew were really for me, so I came down from my cushion and munched my breakfast while Grizzly took Polar's cup of tea in to her.

'You could make that little bear we found some trousers,' he said to her.  'I think he'd like that.'

She laughed and said she had better things to do but the next day, after I had sneaked into their cabin at night and done my special animal whispering in her ear, she made me my favourite bear dungarees. 

After that, they made me lots of other real bear things and always made sure there was nice bear food where I could get to it, although they both carried on pretending I wasn't a real bear, for a little while.