0.2 miles 5 hours
A walk unlike our usual hikes. We assembled at an unusual meeting place, the cafe of DGone, where we found David babysitting a young lady from Finland. Elaine and Lynn, bedecked in dancescottishforpudsey.org were spirited into the inner sanctum to look after the injured bear. So we three guys were left to make lady Finn feel welcome (I didn’t catch her name) while watching for Pudsey to walk past. While waiting we met various people, David’s in-laws dropped by, and a woman who told us she had a group of two year olds dancing and they were frightened of bears. She introduced herself by looking at me and saying in a rather accusatory tone “I know you”. Well she does (non-biblically), and “hello” would have been more appropriate. And how the hell do you teach scottish country dancing to two year olds. Won’t they keep falling over? David got it right when he said it would be like trying to herd cats. They looked older than two years old to me.
Eventually the cafe began to empty with shouts suggesting Pudsey was outside. He had sneaked by without us noticing. Turns out he used a back door. Obviously he has some experience of this showbiz stuff. Anyway that was our cue to go backstage. Oh the joy of flashing a backstage pass.
We found our room, slipped into our gear and waited for Pudsey to return. He had certainly warmed up quite a bit and we needed to play the fan upon his head several times throughout the afternoon to cool him down. He warmed up very quickly once on stage and he was a little clumsy, presumably because the loss of binocular vision impaired his visio-spatial sense. I understand now why he needs his helpers to guide him about. He also has syndactyly with only three fingers on each hand, which made me feel quite unexpectedly uncomfortable.
Happily no outsiders were there to see David’s medley of dirty dancing moves. They brought tears (of laughter) to my eyes but I thought video would have been inappropriate. I regret that decision now.
It was strange that Pudsey varied quite a bit in his dancing ability at different times. I can only presume he liked some music more than others. I had hoped we could have had a picture with all of us with Pudsey, but there always seemed to be one of our party missing. One very curious thing was that whenever Andy was missing, Pudsey walked like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch. Strange.
We weren’t allowed to feed Pudsey during his appearance, but I felt sorry for him even though he did seem a bit portly. I left some snacks lying about in the back room and some did disappear. I’m pleased he didn’t need to use the toilet. I don’t know much about bears but I do know that they have to s**t in the woods. God knows how we would have got him out to Mabie.
The dancers costumes were very good, at least those I saw. More than £1500 was raised so I heard.
I look forward to the youtube videos. You can see some more pictures of Pudsey below.
