I have been neglecting my blog, as I have been a very busy small bear recently, having all sorts of adventures with my fellow bears and human guardians. Once again, I'm going to write about our most recent adventure before I try to catch up with some of the others.
We have been helping our human guardians with their craft stall at the Endon Well Dressing this weekend, where Polar sells some of the things she paints Roses and Castles style. Well Dressing is a Peak District tradition, which
involves decorating village wells and springs with fabulous pictures
made from flower petals pressed onto slabs of damp clay. Endon, a
village between Stoke-on-Trent and Leek, celebrates their Well Dressing
with a three day fair and festival.
Today was also Endon Bear's sixth "birthday" - or rather, the anniversary of Hanley Bear and I helping Polar to win him from the spin-the-wheel game at the fair here six years ago.
Endon and I came over on Saturday to help with the stall, and helped Polar and Grizzly to sell lots of pretty things, including all of our teapots. Polar painted them more than 20 years ago, but stored them up in the loft and forgot about them!
We also saw the fabulous Well Dressing itself.
"It's got the RNLI's 200th Anniversary on it," said Endon. "We'll have to bring Finley Bear from Minehead to see it!"
I thought that was an excellent idea, and was sure Polar wouldn't mind bringing an extra bear or two when we came again on Monday.
There was no craft tent on Sunday, so we helped our humans in our garden instead, in between heavy showers. The festival field at Endon had been very soft, so Polar was worried that all the rain would make it too soggy to hold the craft fair on Monday. But the organisers made sure there was lots of straw on the ground inside and outside the tent and helped us to bring our bags of painted ware onto the site, and Polar put her wellies on.
Then Polar had a break from painting and carried us down to the Well Dressing in our Bear Bag. Finlay Bear was thrilled to see the RNLI decorations and said how clever it was to make all this from flower petals.
"We are miles from the sea here," said Hanley Bear, after explaining to Finlay that Staffordshire Well Dressings were the best in the whole world, even though Derbyshire is better-known for them. "I wonder why they made a picture about the lifeboats?"
"Don't forget that lots of the people we rescue are from inland, not from seaside towns," Finlay reminded him. "Seaside folk grow up learning to respect the sea and take care around it, even on sunny days, but people who come to the beach on holiday don't understand rip-tides and off-shore winds, and that's how they get into trouble. Maybe we rescued someone from this village?"
We didn't know if that had happened or not, but what Finlay says about the people who are rescued is quite true - lots of them do come from inland towns and counties. Polar took our picture sitting in front of the Well Dressing, then she helped us back into our bag and carried us up the muddy hill and back towards the craft tent.
Just outside, Hanley Bear spotted something curious - it looked like a picture frame full of bees! He went over for a closer look and a member of the local beekeepers' group explained it was a display hive, so he could show people how bees make their honeycomb. Even better, they had a stall selling fresh local honey inside. Because we had all been good bears, Grizzly bought us a pot!
We carried on helping on the stall and by the end of the afternoon, had sold lots more of Polar's painted things and the stall was looking a little bit bare, even though she was painting new things to fill in the gaps. The weather stayed dry, except for one shower when Grizzly nipped out to get a surprise for us.
There was a big shower just before we got home, but it was followed by a marvellous rainbow. Then Grizzly showed us our surprise - some cakes from the Endon Scouts' cake stall, specially for Endon Bear's birthday!
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