My teddy

Imagination starts here. It did for me anyway. This is my teddy. I don't think he's ever had a name, other than little teddy (I didn't have much imagination back then). I had two bigger teddies once who were mum and dad. I don't know what happened to them. But this is the one, the special one. He's at least as old as I am and may be older. I don't know how I came to own him or whether he belonged to someone else before he came to me.

He used to be part of all my adventures as a small child. That's how he came to have a tar stain on one foot. I think he fell when doing some rope-climbing. He also seems to be blind in one eye. My mum knitted him a green stripy jumper and made an outfit for him of red shorts and shirt but they have long gone.

I wanted to blip him after reading this article about men and their teddies. He's been loved by all our children but he still lives with us. He's not alone. This is his adoptive family. The big one on the left is Gill's teddy, called Tessie Bear.

Yesterday, by the way, went generally to the script except we had a Chinese meal, not curry. There were fewer Scots and Scottish flags than we would normally see, possibly a sign of more straightened times, but I thought their team played well and they scored two great tries. In the pub we chewed over the independence question for a while and decided that we were happy to stay with Britain but there was general consensus that we'd quite like an anthem of our own, something I've blogged on a few times.

On the train back home there was a bunch of young men wearing kilts, with bells in their socks, white handkerchiefs, and straw boaters. I think they were a mixed Scottish/English party and the idea, they said, was to meld both cultures, sort of tartan morris dancing. I suppose that would make them British, then. I was happy to sing along with them.