Schnookolpockle

Amid all the exotic bric-a-brac at an antique fair, there is perhaps nothing as poignant as a teddy bear.

The copper kettles, the brooches, the tortoise shell shoehorns, they all have historical attraction – a window into households and times past.

A raggle-taggle bear however, well they are winsome, but hardly desirable.

So, it was not something I ever considered buying.

After all, they must be the holding place for thousands of other people’s discarded skin cells, foreign dribble, crusty fur, embedded with leftover all-day-sucker and microscopic fragments of gum.

But there was something in this one’s beady eyes, his plaintiff outstretched paws that called.

Called…not to me but to my four-year-old son. He refused to take a step further as we wandered by that well-worn bear ensconced in a small wicker chair. I tried to reason with him, and he was having none of it. We discussed all the toys he already had at home.

“They are OK already he said, they have me – this guy has no-one,” he wailed.

“Just look at him mum, he wants to come home with us, we can’t leave him here alone, it’s just not ‘umanitarian.”