Oh! Oh! I am soooo excited! In fact, I am bubbling over from my littlest teddy toes right up to the peak of my teddy ears with excitement! I am on cloud 11 which means that I am happier than being on cloud nine! Would you like to know why? Well, I have just come back from the most happiest afternoon outing spent with special teddy friends! It was sooo exciting last week, when I received a very nice and welcoming invitation to have afternoon tea with Margaret's 3 teddy bears on Monday September the 9^th in celebration of World-wide Teddy Bear Day! Do you know Margaret? She is the FOS secretary and from what I can hear, she sounds quite a nice lady!! And… when I talked to her 3 teddies this afternoon, they told me that she looks after them very well and she is a caring lady.  My dear friend Mr. Oliver bear was invited too, and he told me that he would drive me in his bear mobile car. And… guess what? Of course you can't really guess what I was going to say, because you can't read minds but I just like saying guess what!! Anyway, you don't have to guess because I am going to tell you! The invitation said that Margret was going to cook us oatmeal honey bread from Winnie the Pooh's tea-time cookbook!! Doesn't that sound extra-yummy to you?!! Nice food plus a great teddy chatty time with teddy friends equals a BIG smile on our faces!! The cookbook also brought back lovely memories of when I was just a little teddy, and my grandma ted (her name was Elsie and we all called her Mama) used to cooked all her family lots of nice food from this cookbook! Pancakes, chocolate cake, scones… growing teddies are always hungry so we all enjoyed eating everything she so lovingly cooked for us!  Mr. Oliver and I were literally bopping away on our feet with expectation for the afternoon! We were grinning from one teddy ear to the other. You may have been wondering why I had an extra big smile o my face when you were doing your shopping at the Kiosk last weekend? Well, now you know that I was looking forward to the Monday afternoon adventure!

All of a sudden though, Mr. Oliver and I had the same thought at the same time. What do you wear to afternoon tea? We reread the invitation, but there wasn't a mentioned dress code. Should we go very formal in our clothing attire? Do we just need to wear casual clothing? Will we look wrong if we wear a fancy dress outfit? Should we wear footy clothing such as a beanie and scarf and footy jumper because it is footy finals time at the moment? Do we need a hat? Hmm… perhaps we had better watch the weather forecast on the news to see what the weather will be on Monday? Will it be hot or cold, and how will that affect what clothes we wear? Decisions! Decisions! In the end, we decided to each wear… a top hat, bow tie and a tuxedo! It is not every day that you are invited out for afternoon tea, and so we decided to celebrate the occasion in style. Wearing nice clothes makes a teddy feel good too! We were a little concerned that we may spill crumbs on the floor or onto our tuxedo but reassured ourselves that we were sure that  Margaret's teddies would have plates and serviettes for us to use. Also, I am good at using a vacuum cleaner. I sometimes like to give a quick vacuum of the Kiosk as my daily exercise before going to bed. Dr. Ted always encourages teddies to do some daily exercise each day, to keep our bodies supple and our teddy muscles working good. I treat vacuuming as a part of my "exercise regime". (It makes it sound quite fancy having an "exercise regime" doesn't it!! I don't really have an exercise plan! I just do a bit of dancing to music when the kiosk closes, and play hopscotch on the kiosk floor, and hop/skip/jump from one  kiosk shelf to another…and it all seems to keep me fit! If you happen to be coming past the Kiosk one day and you hear a bit of a thumping noise, please don't be alarmed! It is just little me, Kiosk Ted, dancing or hopping away, keeping myself fit!!)

Anyway, back to the fantastical afternoon I spent!! Mr. Oliver said that he would pick me up at the Kiosk soon after lunch time. When I heard his friendly little  "toot toot" of the bear mobile, I shouted a little "yippee!" and scurried out of the Kiosk and headed straight for the  bright red bear mobile. As quick as I could say:" Happy teddy day!"  we were off in the car and on our way  to the house! We had pre-arranged to give a friendly "toot toot" of the horn when we entered the street of the house, so Mr. Oliver leaned forward and went to softly push  on the gold horn … but in his excitement he pushed it with a great force and the "toot toot" sounded like a great tidal wave siren sound!! And the horn got stuck!!   It was so very, very noisy!! It caused such a commotion! All the dogs that lived in the street started barking!! The little babies and toddlers that were having their afternoon sleeps all woke and started to cry in alarm at such a loud noise! The cats that live in the street got scared and scurried up the trees… and got stuck up there! (Don't tell anyone, but in the end we had to call the fire brigade in to get them down from the trees!) All of a sudden, we saw lots of faces appearing behind the curtains in the windows of the houses, looking out to see what was causing the problem! And right throughout this "disaster" Mr. Oliver and my faces were going bright red with embarrassment! Well, they would have been going bright red if teddy faces can turn red… but instead we just looked a bit more greyer and browner! We eventually managed to get the horn "unstuck"' and stop the loud noise! At least our 3 teddy friends knew that we had arrived! They gleefully rushed out to greet us, and ushered us straight away into their home!

They got out their tedpod ( the teddy version of an ipod) and whilst we chatted away and caught up on all the teddy news and gossip , the tedpod played great songs like "today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic" .

Well, with so much teddy chatting taking place, it wasn't very long before we got a bit thirsty and hungry! Margaret had cooked up such nice oatmeal honey bread and Kiosk -Ted had brought with him some bottles of lemonade from the kiosk for us all to enjoy drinking.  Our very nice teddy hosts had got out some cake plates with pretty floral pattern edges around the sides of them, and also we had accompanying floral serviettes. We were extra, extra careful about not leaving any crumbs on the floor or spilling any of our lemonade. As soon as we had finished afternoon tea, we all leapt on to our teddy feet and each one of us washed our own plate in the kitchen sink.  Oh, I forgot to mention, that as guests, we didn't want to come empty handed. Kiosk-Ted and I had previously discussed what we thought would be the appropriate gift to give to the teddies. Hmmm… decisions! decisions again!! We ended up making an "executive bear decision" and thought that a box of Roses chocolates would be acceptable. Our host teddies were so very delighted when we presented this box of chocolates to them! We had planned for them to keep the chocolates for later and to share them with Margaret… but the teddies had other ideas!! Straight away they opened the box and very generously offered us to have one too, right that minute! Well, we didn't want to look ungrateful for their very thoughtful gesture so of course we took one and the other teddies did too and… well… I think that there may be just an empty box left when Margaret gets home from work! And when I think again,  I think the  empty box "evidence"  that the chocolates had all been eaten may have been hidden in the rubbish bin too! Oh, I think I may have forgotten to mention earlier that we were all "bears home alone" for this afternoon, so we had to be on our "best behaviour" and look after the house whilst Margaret was at work and not leave a mess for when she returned home. 

It was a very happy afternoon of laughing, dancing to the music, and playing some backyard teddy cricket (I was quite a good batsman cricketer when I was at teddy school you know! My top score was twenty! We have a teddy cricket rule that once you reach 20 runs, you declare and the next teddy comes in.) Oh, I forgot to mention, that we decided to remove our top hats when we played cricket! We replaced it with a baggy grey hat, which is a higher honour to wear than the baggy green hat that the Aussie men's cricket team does! The other teddies did think we looked very trendy in our top hats though! "Very debonair and suave" were terms they used to describe us! (We were secretly soo flattered by such nice compliments!!) 

When we were entering the house, we happened to notice that there were some skid marks on the road. I do hope that no one thought that they were a result of the bear mobile! Mr. Oliver bear is a very good driver and none of us teddies would ever do "doughnuts"' or "burn outs"  using the bear mobile!

The time came when the grandfather clock in the loungerooom chimed as the hour passed, and so we decided that we had better say our goodbyes and head back home. The other teddies in the Kiosk would be wanting to hear how our afternoon went and Mr. Oliver did whisper to me at one stage that he hoped everything was going okay at the Mynards household. He is a very protective bear, you know! He likes to keep his eyes on them and would put on his bright red "super-teddy" cape if they got into distress. He wouldn't want to be too long away from them.

The teddies came out with us to the bear mobile to  wave goodbye to us, and as quick as could be we were off on our journey homewards bound.  We did not even attempt to toot the horn goodbye this time! Mr. Oliver dropped me off at the McKittrick Centre, and I happily skipped down to the Kiosk. I quickly took off my top hat whilst entering the door of the Kiosk.

I am soooo tired now though! It has been a very tiring but a very happy day!! It will remain in my teddy memory for a long time! It has been a great world-wide teddy day!!

Until next time,

          Have a cuppa tea and a nice chat with a friend. And please be careful if you are in a car and decide to use the horn to give a little friendly "toot toot"! 

            Your friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                Also simply known as "Ted"!!