Do you know Wilma the white coloured teddy bear? She is such a bright and energetic teddy! She hops and jumps from one place to another! I must be truthful though and say that she doesn't literally hop and jump because she isn't a kangaroo or a grasshopper! She is very happy being a teddy! And she doesn't often play hopscotch, so I don't often see her hopping about. She would definitely be a good hopscotcher though if she decided to train and go to the Olympics as a hopscotch athlete! Oh! That would be so exciting to say that I have a teddy friend that is an Olympic hopscotcher! I could wear my favourite green and gold scarf in the Kiosk when she was competing! I could send a special "bear-o-gram" to cheer her on, which gets to the athletes so much more quicker than a telegram!

Anyway, I'll go back to telling you about Wilma. She has completely white fur, and always wears white clothes. She even has white ears! She wears a white pearl necklace and paints her paw nails white. She wears nice white lip gloss, and she has been known to use white eye shadow. She doesn't often wear makeup though, because she says that white makeup doesn't show up very well  on her skin. Would you like to guess what her favourite food to eat is? I will tell you. She enjoys eating vanilla ice -cream, and soft serve white yogurt in cones.  

She hasn't always been coloured white though! No, at one time she was coloured brown! But… one day she was doing her clothes washing in her laundry. She had loaded her clothes into the washing machine, pushed the on button on top of the machine, and the machine started whirring.  Whilst Wilma was standing there, she started to have a delightful daydream filled with sunshine and rainbows and very little flowers growing all over the grass and little teddies dancing and jigging about and cheery music and… when all of a sudden a VERY loud crash noise burst into her daydreaming and very quickly brought her back to her washing reality! A big black bird had nose-dived into the glass window perhaps to say hello to Wilma! (She is a very friendly teddy you know!) And this black bird was sitting on the ground with all sorts of stars twirling around the top of his head! It is such fun to go outside on a warm Summer's night when the sky is  very black and look up at the starry, starry skies. But seeing these stars around the top of a dazed bird was NOT a very good sight to see! Wilma's cure for when people feel not too well is to make them a toasted cheese sandwich! I don't know why she thinks that a toasted cheese sandwich will have healing properties but everyone that she has  toasted them for has said it is very, very comforting! Just as Wilma started to rush to her kitchen to make the sandwich, her pointy right elbow just happened to knock the White King bottle that was on a nearby laundry shelf! The cap of the bottle couldn't have been on very tightly… and the next thing Wilma knew was the white king liquid was completely covering her!! Do you know what Wilma did then? Other teddies may have started to cry but all Wilma could do was laugh… and giggle… and chuckle… and grin!! She just thought the situation was so very funny!  Forgetting about toasting the sandwich (sorry Mr. Black Bird but you will have to look after yourself! Perhaps Hillary the ham and pickle sandwich eater might make you a sandwich if you ask her very nicely!) , Wilma then tried to get the white king liquid off her fur! Hmmm… she tried so very, very hard but she just could not get it off her fur skin!! It had completely bleached her white! Wilma decided right that instant she would just make the best of the situation and from then on she always wore all white clothes and accessories! She had always liked vanilla ice-cream so becoming a white teddy was not a hindrance to her at all. She was sooo very happy that her nice teddy Mum and Dad had named her Wilma because it now made sense that she could be known throughout the teddy world as Wilma the white teddy! Isn't that very great that they chose that name?!!

But… I must tell you the most funniest thing that happened! (Oh! I forgot to tell you. In case you were worried about the washing not being taken out of the machine and hung on the clothes line. It was such a sunny day and a great day for clothes to be dried! Wilma managed to get the clothes out of the machine but unfortunately she had White King stained hands and her red hankies turned white! She also had blue bed socks because her teddy paws get quite chilly on some days. "You must always keep your paws warm, then your insides will feel warm too" was Grandma Teddy's advice to us as we were growing up. Oh, I do miss my dear grandma ted!! She sooo much enjoyed eating scones, and eating pumpkin, but never pumpkin scones which is a mixture of the two! I never knew why she didn't eat these types of scones, but it will always remain one of life's never solved mysteries! The blue bed socks turned white when Wilma touched them with her white paws too. Oh and I did find out later that Mr. Black bird with the sore dazed head did make a full recovery! He took a couple of Panamax tablets,  made himself a toasted banana and honey sandwich and spent the rest of the day just resting quietly under the shade of an apple tree. Personally, I would not have thought that resting under this type of tree was a very wise decision to make. It would not be very good if an apple fell of a branch straight onto his head! That would have caused an even bigger headache! Oh, and in case you were wondering, the window of the laundry was NOT broken or damaged at all when Mr. Black Bird crashed into it! It had been reinforced with bird-resistant tint a few months ago by Gerry the glass-fitter teddy. Gerry is such a great worker, and this just shows that he uses first class ingredients and does his job well ! )

Anyway, back to the most funniest thing that happened with Wilma! She was preparing her tea the other night, and decided to have a  lamb chop, some boiled potatoes and a salad to go with it. Of course, her dessert was going to be fruit salad topped with white marshmallows and vanilla ice cream. She prepared and cooked the chop and the potatoes and started to prepare the salad. She grabbed some lettuce leaves, sliced up some tomato, grated some cheese… and you may have guessed already what the final ingredient was? Yes, it was beetroot! Hmmm… Wilma the white teddy PLUS purple beetroot EQUALS disastrous consequences! Wilma has a cuckoo clock. Clarence the cuckoo pops his head out of the clock every hour to tell Wilma what the time is. Wilma was trying to pretend that she was a famous cook like Nigella or Jamie the tv cooks, and so she was caught up in trying to make her salad look extra fancy. She was so absorbed in her work, when all of a sudden Clarence the cuckoo popped his head out to say the time... and Wilma got such a shock that she dropped all the beetroot that she had in her serving spoon right onto her white clothes, and her pointy LEFT elbow this time knocked over the bottle of beetroot juice and this went all over her fur too! Beetroot stains clothes and furs so very much, particularly purple on white! Wilma straight away rushed to try to remove the beetroot stain by washing herself and her clothes again and again and scrubbing as much as she could. After quite a lot of hard and exhausting work, the beetroot stains had gone and she was able to shout to herself:"Success!" and flop onto the nearest sofa and promptly fell asleep!   Oh, don't worry!  The gas stove top and oven had already been turned off! Wilma didn't want her kitchen to burst into flame, singe her white fur and clothes and cause her to be blackened by the flames! When Wilma woke up she was feeling sooo very hungry! She quickly grabbed her plate of nearly prepared tea, and enjoyed her beetroot -less dinner!

Hmmm... I think I am feeling a little bit hungry too! I think I will take 2 packets of snowballs off the Kiosk shelves. One to send to Wilma because she will like the fluffy white centre and white coconut on the outside, and the other for me to  have one with a nice cup of Twinings tea for supper. Goodnight to you all…

 Until next time,

                  Please be extra careful if you decide to eat beetroot in a meal!   Also be very wary of bottles of White King!

Your friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                Also simply known as "Ted"!!