I am just SO very VERY excited!! Guess what?!! If you can't guess I'll tell you!!  The "Twinkle Toes Teddy Tap-Dancers" group is coming to Australia!! And not only are they coming to Australia but they are actually coming to Victoria. And not only that, but they are coming to perform in Melbourne!! To think that I will be living and breathing and sleeping in the same city where they will be!! They come from England. My teddy friend Mr. Oliver from Oxford has English relatives and they told him that this Teddy Tap-dancing group is such a big "hit'" over there!! I don't know if you have heard of the Beatles or The Seekers or even the new band One Direction or Kylie Minogue…but the Teddy Tap-dancers  are so much better than ANY of these entertainers!!  And they gained the status of winning the "number one teddy entertaining group for 2012" last year!!  My teddy friends and I are definitely going to go over to the Melbourne Airport and see if we can catch a glimpse of their plane coming in on the tarmac...and we might even get to see them after they come through Customs. Oh, they will probably have to declare beforehand their bottles of honey and marmite and frozen yorkshire puddings and twinings tea. And I heard a rumour that their passport photo is really a picture that was taken by a member of the paparazzi media that follows them around taking photos of them at their "gigs" and sells them to teddy magazines. They apparently didn't like the official passport photos that were originally taken, because they blinked their teddy eyes at the wrong moment! It is all very exciting!

 That reminds me of the time when my teddy friends and I last went over to the airport, just for a little afternoon trip in Mr. Oliver's Bearmobile. One of our teddy friends called Mr. Tedderley came along amidst our teddy group. He is what you might call quite an "accident prone" teddy! If someone is going to fall over or trip or have a little tumble onto the ground... well it would be him!!

   Just as we entered the airport, we found that a plane had just landed and the passengers would soon be waiting in the "luggage picking-up" area, ready for their suit cases and other baggage to come out on the conveyor belt through the luggage chute.            W decided to go and have a little look. The first few items came out one and by one and then slowly more and more items arrived. No one had started to collect their luggage yet though, because they were still disembarking from the plane and making their way to this area., We all decided to get a bit "closer to the action" so as we could see everyone collecting their particular suitcases or luggage items. Well….Mr. Tedderley got a little bit too close and …he tripped and fell onto the conveyor belt!! But to be more precise he landed right on top of one of the suitcases and the thing next we knew was the quite alarming ( but secretly very funny!!) sight of a teddy on top of a suitcase going around and around on the conveyor belt  in a sea of suitcases surrounding  him !! He was furiously waving his hand paws and his little feet paws were trying to keep him steady and his teddy head looked a slight bit giddy!!  He did look quite a sight! And all of us teddies were putting on our teddy thinking caps to try to think how we could "rescue" him! Every time we went to grab him off, we couldn't catch him in time!! The conveyor belt does move along quite steadily you know!! And every time Mr. Tedderley disappeared at the back part of the conveyor belt , we all sort of held our breath until he reappeared again under the strips of rubber that all the luggage items pass through! (He did have ruffled fur with all the times he went through those strips!) By this time, more and more people were starting to come and grab their luggage off the conveyor belt…and many giggles were exploding from people's mouths and amused expressions were starting to creep onto their faces!! Well, it did look funny! Eventually, all my teddy friends formed a line and some kind passengers joined on the end of our line…and with the sound of the call: "one, two three" when Mr. Tedderley next arrived, we all reached out and with one big swoop we grabbed him off and he landed with a bit of a flop onto the ground! A bit bruised but now safely away from "that" conveyor belt!! What an adventurous day! We decided just to head straight home after all that had happened, and I invited all my teddy friends back to the Kiosk for a nice cup of Liptons tea to calm our nerves!!

Oh, I forgot to say that we all had to walk through a metal detector on the way back to the bearmobile. It must have looked a bit funny seeing the line of us teddies one-in-front-of-the-other stomping though the detector, but the security guards were really nice and gave us a wide beaming smile as we all went though!  None of us set the detector off, because we just have fur and don't wear metal!

So I still am looking forward to seeing the "Twinkle Toes Teddy Tap-Dancers" arrive at the airport but perhaps I won't take Mr. Tedderley with us this time! Or just avoid letting him go too close to that conveyor belt. !!

Until next time,

     Look out for those tap dancing teddies!

           Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                       Also simply known as "Ted"!!