Christmas in August

You might remember that, when we met Tour Guide Ted at Wightwick Manor, he invited us to a party he was having at his Ancient Assistant's house.

"It's a Christmas Party," he said, "So wear Christmas jumpers or fancy dress."  

He explained that they couldn't have a party at Christmas, in case the humans caught the nasty virus, so were having it in the summer.  Assistant D was going to raise money for some charities with a raffle, Ancient Assistant was doing bingo and Assistant P and his pals are going to play jazz tunes.

"My band, Lachov Direction, are doing a concert too," Ted told us. 

"How exciting!" cheered Waverley. 

The evening before the party, we got out the bear-clothes basket and started searching for things to wear.  Hanley, Endon and I all had Christmas jumpers but Waverley, Langwathby and Huddlesford needed to borrow fancy dress things.  Hanley's old Paddington outfit fitted Langers and Huddlesford could just squeeze into my Robin Hood costume, although I thought, being a big bear, he looked more like Little John!

As the party wasn't until the afternoon, Polar and Grizzly said we could have a morning adventure on the way, so took us to see the Chasewater Railway near Lichfield.

As well as a full-sized steam railway, which runs along the edge of the Chasewater reservoir, there is a marvellous model railway.  This is so big that Waverley could almost ride in the waggons. 

We didn't have time to ride on the human-sized trains, but Grizzly promised we could visit again another day.

Driving down through the north-west suburbs of Wolverhampton, we saw some of the canals we had been boating along earlier in the summer, and a very nice memorial to the canal builders and workers.

When we reached Ted's road, it was time to get dressed for the party.  Langers loved being Paddington!

Ted was very pleased to see us and sat us with some other bear friends and their humans on a table close to the bands - both the human Tividale Garden Trio and Lackov Direction.  Lucky little Waverley was given a Lackov Direction T-shirt.

We all enjoyed dancing to the TGT band, while the humans sorted out drinks and bought raffle tickets.  Assistant D and Ancient Assistant gave us all bags of sweets and treats, and Christmas hats, flags and crackers.

Hanley was very pleased that, when Grizzly poured his beer, there were lots of bubbles!

We all enjoyed Ancient Assistant's bingo games, although we didn't win anything.  "Maybe we'll be lucky in the raffle," I said, as we bears usually are.

When the humans were enjoying their buffet, it was time for the Lackov Direction concert.  We thought Ted's band were brilliant!  As you can see, there was a very big audience.

We all sang along with their songs and jumped and danced, then cheered for an encore.  I had never been to a bear band concert before and found it was great fun.

After the concert, we had more time to chat to our friends.  We saw Reddy, who we met at the Black Country Living Museum in 2019, but also met little Grizzle, and Martha B Bear and her friends, who had recently returned from a holiday on the Isle of Wight.

At the end of the party, we all sang Christmas carols with the human band and then did a Last Night of the Proms finale, although it started pouring with rain at that point, and all the bears and humans out in the open had to run for cover under the marquees.

And we were lucky in the raffle!  Two of our tickets were drawn; Polar collected a nice bottle of wine and Grizzly collected a big Koala Bear called Kenneth!

Kenneth was going to stay with us until we went to visit the human cubs, then was going to live with them.

Finally, it was time to say goodbye to Ted and all our friends.  We said a big "thank you" for inviting us to such a wonderful party and giving us some lovely presents and tasty treats.

"It was good to see you all," said Ted.  "And, before you go, we have another surprise.  A friend we met at the RAF Museum needs a new home and we wondered if he could live with you?  We remembered that Grizzly used to be in the RAF and thought they could talk to each other about vintage aircraft."

 "I'm sure our humans won't mind," I said and, sure enough, Grizzly and Polar were perfectly happy for Cosford Bear to come home with us.  Because he wears such a smart uniform, he won't usually come out on adventures with us but he will guard the house while we are out and about, so thank you, Tour Guide Ted, for introducing us to our new friends Kenneth and Cosford!