Hockey versus Honey
WHENEVER Christopher Robin was wearing his Big Boots, Pooh knew they were about
to have an Adventure. Pooh liked adventures: of course, he did not know exactly
what an adventure was, only that he liked them. So he put on his red jumper.
'Are we going somewhere?'
'I'm going to the annual hockey match between the Swaffhams,' said Christopher Robin.
' What's an animal hockey match?' asked a puzzled Pooh.
'A hockey match which only happens once every year, you silly old bear!
Pooh scratched his nose. He really wanted to ask if you could use a hockey match to light a candle, but thought better of it. Perhaps Christopher Robin meant 'rocket match'. Might there then be a bon-fire? ' Is this once-in-a-year thingumee like Christmas?' he enquired. 'Because if so, shouldn't we invite all our friends to come along. No one's going to want to miss it if it's at all like Christmas, are they?'
'You mean Piglet?'
'Yes, and Eeyore, Tigger, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo, everyone.'
Christopher Robin nodded. 'It's true. Anyone who is anyone goes to the Boxing Day hockey match.
'That's what you said when we went shopping in Waitrose,' muttered Eeyore.
'Oh, do come along. We shall miss the bully off at this rate.'
What's a bully off, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
'I think it's something you eat,' offered the ever-hopeful bear. It was the time of day when breakfast is a distant memory and lunch seems far away.
Christopher Robin, in his Big Boots and new woolly hat, led the little procession along the village street towards the football ground.
'Is it far?' Piglet questioned, puffing with the effort of keeping up.
'It's only a few big bounces.' It was Tigger, who nearly knocked Christopher Robin over in his boundful enthusiasm. '
Adventures are always great distances away, and usually concluded before arrival,' observed Eeyore, bringing up the rear reluctantly.
And so the people of the Forest came at last to the football field to watch the now legendary encounter: that is to say, some did and some didn't, as Pooh so perceptively put it, for the motives of our old friends were as mixed as those of any inhabitant of the Swaffhams. Owl had overslept. Rabbit took one look at the motley miscellany of assorted dogs and hopped it home again. Kanga, preferring cricket, not surprisingly, stayed away. Christopher Robin was there out of a sense of obligation, while Piglet crept into his pocket 'just in case'. Boisterous Tigger bounced excitedly. Pooh hoped for the best, and Eeyore feared the worst.
Naturally, it fell to Christopher R to explain whatever was going on to his companions. As those stoical devotees of the annual Swaffhams' ritual know well, it is taxing enough to interpret such arcane Boxing Day behaviour to an intelligent visiting guest. (They are, it is rumoured, sometimes to be found). Imagine C.R's difficulty having to enlighten creatures whose only sport was to hunt the elusive Woozle and the awesome Heffalump; whose only game was Poohsticks! Despite Christopher Robin's best endeavours, Piglet was convinced the ball was an orange and the Bulbeck goalie an Heffalump, no less! No one was able to decide upon the true nature of the Prior goalkeeper, a bafflement widely shared, as it happens.
After a characteristically profound effort of concentration, Pooh concluded it was not necessary for a Bear of Little Brain to understand something as pointless as hockey. However, he proposed that meaning might be given to the meaningless by serving honey at half-time, better yet at the end of each quarter, and, best of all, every time the umpire (whatever that was) blew his whistle.
Tigger sprang about as only Tiggers (and Airedales) can, trying to find a spare hockey stick and wanting very much to join in. Eeyore stood slowly shaking his head, every so often confiding a gloomy thought to Christopher Robin such as, 'A donkey could starve in this place. I haven't seen a thistle all morning. How do they expect thistles to grow in this field with so much rushing up and down, rolling about and digging of holes?'
Christopher Robin carried on gamely with his commentary.
'The sticks are for hitting the orange, you said.'
'It's a ball. Piglet, a ball, not an orange.'
'But they seem to be kicking the orange with their feet and using the sticks to hit one another.'
'Things are not always what they seem,' ventured Pooh, who could sometimes sound wise, but only by accident and then only if he had not thought too hard for too long.
'What's the point of it?' grumbled Eeeyore.
Christopher Robin considered this for a moment. 'It doesn't have a point. It's fun, you see, just fun.'
Eeyore did not see and neither did Piglet, who by now considered hockey much more dangerous than catching Heffalumps.
'What is the fun about? asked Pooh, for whom having fun was a very serious business.
'The people in the white shirts are trying to hit the ball with their sticks past the man in the cap and between the flag and the post. And those in the coloured shirts must try and stop the white shirts doing it and hit the ball, well, past whoever or whatever it is in the goal at the other end. It's really very simple.'
Pooh took time to consider this strange New Fun. 'I think the Fun would be Funnier if they all tried to hit the ball in the same direction,' he said at last.
'Silly old bear!' laughed Christopher Robin. 'That wouldn't be a game. Having two sides is a game, and the game is the Fun part.'
'No, the knocking over and falling down is the Fun part,' yelled Tigger bouncing up and down on the touchline.
Now Pooh knew something about sides; sides were what kept tops from bottoms, and so he wondered which side he and his friends were on.
'We can't be on any side,' Christopher Robin told him. 'We are not from the Swaffhams, so we must be neutral.'
'What's nootrul mean?' posed Piglet from Christopher's pocket.
'It means we can't be one thing or the other,' came the reply.
Pooh suddenly felt disembodied. Having no sides and being neither one thing nor another can make a Bear of Little Brain feel like that: so he thought of honey and immediately felt better.
And that was how the friends watched the game unfold, or unravel, as Eeyore would doubtless have put it. People fell about, usually on top of one another and sometimes in heaps; players, especially those in white, seemed about to do something significant and then thought better of it; whistles blew, dogs barked, Tigger bounced, and one poor man left the field in need of 'Kanga's Special Strengthening Medicine' according to Piglet. But there were no goals.
By the end of the Fun, Pooh felt in need of a large amount of lunch. Tigger, on the other hand, wanted the game to go on until 'next Hot Cross Bunday' and Piglet, who loved Hot Cross Buns, wondered when that might be. Eeyore gave his opinion that the goal posts should be set further apart, so that someone could score something quickly and everyone could stop all the fuss, thus proving that Eeyore is not the ass some believe him to be.
Christopher Robin declared the Boxing Day hockey to be an 'Institushun' which confused Pooh more than ever since he was still trying to understand a game with two sides and no top or bottom. 'I think I shall call the playing field 'Pooh's Other Corner' from now on. Right! Who's for left-over Christmas pudding and mince pies?' At which Pooh's mind was at once emptied of hockey and filled with honey, and, as the happy friends hurried home, he sang this little hum.
Humpty, tumpty, humpty tum,
Another hockey match is done,
Priors and Bulbecks been and gone,
Humpty, tumpty, humpty, tum.
Humpty, tumpty, humpty, tum
Pooh and Piglet, Eeyore glum
Saw a game which no one won,
Home for honey, yum, yum, yum,
Humpty, tumpty, humpty, tum.
A.A.M.
FOOTNOTE TO THE HOCKEY REPORT
JOHN PRENTICE should have been there to write the hockey report. He had promised to come. However, to be fair, he did concoct a pretty convincing story with that kidney stone yarn which yielded him more headlines than our little local affair would have given him. Fortunately A.A.M. was present and he wrote something especially for the children - of all ages!!
There are several extra points to make. £82 was collected for MAGPAS because we gave the job to our best collector - Ruth Scovill. Even hard men blanch when they see Ruth coming with her collection tin. Again this year there was no mulled wine and I was told "if you want it bring it yourself". Following the example of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath who are retiring at the top, I am retiring from hockey umpiring. Our new captain Mike Carrington had to go to hospital after the first quarter, our Italian film star limped off in the third quarter never to return, and our goal keeper again put on a magnificent performance in his wig, wings and tutu. Several passing rugby players really fancied him and thought him a "braw lassie".