Love from Paddington

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I sat very still and when the man who collects the tickets came round and saw the label you tied round my neck, he must have thought I was a parcel.

It’s lucky bears are good at stowing away because when the train reached London it couldn’t go any further and I found myself on a strange railway platform near the Lost Property Office.

It was very busy. Everybody else was in a hurry and they seemed to know where they were going, so I sat on my suitcase and waited for something to happen.

Which was how I met Mr and Mrs Brown.

They were there to meet their daughter, Judy, who was coming home for the school holidays, when Mr Brown spotted me. Mrs Brown didn’t believe him at first, but when she saw my label and read the words ‘PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR.THANK YOU!’ she said at once I must come home with them. I think your adding the words ‘thank you’ must have made all the difference, because if they had left me where I was there would have been nothing to thank them for.

After all, they could have left me in the Lost Property Office, or left me where I was and gone on their way, but they didn’t do either of those things.

Mr Brown asked me what my name was, but when I told them Mrs Brown had trouble saying it, so she decided to call me after the place where we met, which is how I came to have such an unusual name for a bear, because PADDINGTON is the name of the station.

I like it myself, so I hope you do too. Mr Brown says it sounds important and Judy’s brother, Jonathan, told me I might have ended up with a name like CHARING CROSS or WAPPING, which are nowhere near as nice.

Another thing, Aunt Lucy, it’s good that you taught me to speak English when I was small, because not many people in England speak Peruvian.

I went on an Underground train yesterday for the very first time. We were going on a shopping expedition so I asked everyone in the carriage if they spoke Peruvian and no one did. Mind you, not many of them spoke English either!

Mrs Brown bought me a dark blue duffle coat to keep out the cold and Jonathan gave me something called an INK PAD so that when I write a letter to anyone I can make a paw mark to show it is genuine. I don’t suppose many bears have their very own ink pad.

I think perhaps it means I might be staying with them for more than a few days. I do hope so. Judy hopes so too. She says WATCH THIS SPACE!

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The drawing at the top of this letter is what Jonathan told me will one day be called an HISTORIC DOCUMENT if it isn’t already, and I thought you might like to have a copy before I am very much older. There is another one to go with it.

The original was made by a friend of the Browns and it shows me taking a picture of the whole family group on a very old camera. It’s called a ‘plate camera’ and I expected it to be a dinner plate, but it’s what the picture showed up on before they invented film.

It’s only a back view of the Browns I’m afraid, but it will give you a good idea of what they look like.

It’s a good job you can’t see Mr Brown (he’s the one in the middle) because I was having trouble focussing the camera and he was cross because by then they were sitting in his bed of prize petunias, but I had to get it right first time because there was only one plate left and you can’t get them any more.

Well, it wasn’t just that. Jonathan suggested I used a piece of string to measure the distance and I tied the far end onto Mr Brown’s ear by mistake. (I thought it was one of his petunias until I pulled it tight!)

The one on the left is a lady called Mrs Bird. Judy told me she has a bun in her hair. I thought it was in case she got hungry – a bit like me keeping a marmalade sandwich under my hat in case I have an emergency – but apparently she does the cooking and she likes it tied up out of the way. I expect it stops it falling into the saucepans.

The one next to her is Judy. Then, on Mr Brown’s right, there is Jonathan, and last of all, Mrs Brown.

I had to put my head under a black hood at the back of the camera in order to take the picture and all I can say is it’s a good thing you don’t have to take pictures on a plate any more, because as you can see in the other sketch I lost my way and nearly fell in some rose bushes.

Mr Brown said, “Can you picture what the world would be like if everyone taking pictures with their camera had to wear a black hood?”

He was looking at me while he said it.

Anyway, there was a happy ending because when he took the camera into a photographic shop the man was so pleased he put it in his window with a notice saying it was owned by LOCAL BEAR GENTLEMAN and he promised to make some copies of the photograph, so you will get to see what they all look like when you see them the right way round.

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Judy asked me why I number my letters to you instead of dating them. I told her it’s because bears don’t have calendars. I hope that’s right. and we go by seasons. It’s either hot or it’s cold. (Except in England where it never seems to be the same two days running.)

She also asked me how I keep the postcards you send me in the right order. I explained I have an elastic band, and she said, “Everybody has their methods!”

But this is a special letter, so I think you may want to pin it up on the notice board along with the week’s dinner menus, because it might turn out to be HISTORIC like the last one.

Mr Brown has made up his mind at long last. I am here to stay! Best of all, I shall be moving out of the guest room and I shall have a room all to myself at the top of the house. You could say it’s like living in a tree as I did when I was small, but this time it has a wall on all four sides and a door.

Mr Brown said he is doing it up specially. All the bits and pieces arrived in a van this morning and the driver very kindly took them upstairs for us instead of leaving them in the hall.

There is a big can of whitewash, some paint, several rolls of wallpaper with flowers on it and a big bucket for the paste, lots of different brushes and a folding table.

When I asked him what they were all for he gave me a funny look and said, “It’s what’s known as Do-It-Yourself, gov.,” and he wished me best of luck.

I don’t think he had met a bear before because he drove off very fast.

That was last week and Mr Brown, who is something in the city, has been keeping what Jonathan says is called ‘a low profile’ and he hasn’t had a chance to touch them, so the other day when I was at a loose end and everyone else was out of the house I thought I might help him out by ‘Doing-It-Myself