Brownie had a narrow escape this week.
We had got to that desultory stage of a Sunday evening when Antiques Road Show is on in the background, and it’s simply too much effort to turn it off, or to pay attention to it. Besides, the best thing about Antiques Road Show is the contorted expression on the face of the person who has just been told that the Meissen Koala Bear ensemble that they thought was worth £5000 is actually worth £55.
‘Wow!’ they say, with an emptiness that only those who spend hours listening to Matt Hancock would understand. ‘Even so, I’d never part with it.’
Of course not.
On this occasion, someone brought along a Steiff teddy bear, and it was quickly clear that the BBC valuations expert was almost incoherent with excitement.
‘I expect that you’re wondering why I am so excited,’ she said, rhetorically. I never heard the answer, as I was too busy racing upstairs to fetch Brownie, worried that he might miss out on the action.
Brownie is a Steiff bear, too, and has been my constant companion since 1959, including a number of tours of Northern Ireland, a trip to South Georgia and some hot, sweaty months in Hong Kong. Indeed, Brownie was brandished by my best man on our wedding day, with the accusing air of one who had unaccountably not been asked to the event. Like me, Brownie is ageing as well as he can. Like me, he understands that life is generally more nuanced than we like to think it is.
‘Over £1000 and you’re going,’ I told him cheerfully as I thundered down the stairs, so that he at least understood the parameters.
The Roadshow bear, who looked rather more vacant than Brownie, like someone who is struggling to understand the rules of the furlough system, doubled up as a hot water bottle. This, whilst a selling point for sure, was rather degraded by the actual size of the bottle you could fit in being no larger than a Heinz baked bean tin. As a talking point, it was all very well, but as an instrument of thermodynamics, it was completely useless.
‘I expect you’d like me to tell you how much it is worth’
‘Oh, not really,’ said its owner, as if the value of the bear was the last thing on her mind at that moment. ‘But you might as well tell me.’
‘Fifteen thousand pounds,’ said the presenter, without batting an eyelid and, for once, there really was a stunned silence. The lady in question was clearly moved and worried in equal measure.
Seated on the kitchen table, Brownie was looking away from the screen absently. I suspect that he would have been whistling if he had been able to.
‘£15,000!’ I said to Caroline. ‘Take off a couple for the lack of the hot water bottle, and a bit for the general tattiness, and I still think we’ve got a replacement for the Polo on our hands.’
But blood is thicker than water, or at least it is if the price comes crashing down. In the end, apparently, it is all down to what kind of nose the bear has. Mohair nose, and you’re in the money; plastic nose, and the bear goes back to its former life. At the end of the day, the synthetically nosed Brownie is worth no more than my first edition Tintin and the Shooting Star, and he stays put.
Much later, when Caroline was washing paint brushes, and I was climbing into bed, I started to make my peace with the bear.
‘I would never really have sold you,’ I lied. ‘Not in a million years.’
It is the kind of situation that Seamus Heaney so beautifully described as ‘the Music of what happens’.
And thus Brownie dodges a bullet.
(This little piece is calculated to cheer people up at a tricky time. If you know of someone who needs cheering up, and just might find that this does the trick, please share it)
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