The Tale of Brown Bear

There are eighty million of us in the United Kingdom, most of us largely left to our own devices. However from time to time one will appear that deserves some notoriety, like the one we nicknamed the Brown Bear. He, using the kind of wily behaviour many of us don’t possess the nous to use, became a hero.

            Some of you may remember when he made his first tentative steps towards infamy, making appearances on television whenever an important political story broke. This caused much embarrassment at the time, forcing those in charge of the country to recognise us, eventually reintroducing an ancient civil service post dedicated to attending to our kind.

            Brown Bear was forced to further his political career elsewhere, eventually finding himself at the domicile of an ancient and craggy decorated fellow. His cottage, known by the name that it had been given hundreds of years ago, already consisted of a well-established family. But Brown Bear, the charming traveller, managed to convince the group that he would be a worthy guest who would rid them of their troubles once and for all.

            His plan consisted largely of the hope that the old codger would stick to his strict daily routine, of which he knew through the lore that had managed to reach him during his time in London. His beastly deeds had decimated communities for decades, ensuring that no group could settle in his vicinity, or even trespass anywhere on his land for fear of death. His shotgun could be heard blasting nightly, his blood-thirsty craving for solace reaching out beyond the realms of our own kind.

            This behaviour hadn’t been ignored by a collection of do-gooders, who were all scratching their heads trying to find a way to put a stop to this selfish destruction. The leader of the gang had also been on the television on a number of occasions, proving himself a hero or a nuisance depending on your point of view.

            Night after night Brown Bear performed noisy tactical manoeuvres with military precision, forcing the retired Lt. Col. out of his cosy cottage, shotgun in hand. The nightly war raging across that quiet end of Amsley Worton, a village with a pub, but no shop and a village hall, but no school, soon attracted the return of the protectors, and of Matty Smith-Henderson with his even bigger shotgun. And in a mid-evening last September, he knocked on the door and shot him dead.

            Today, thanks to Matty, now incarcerated for twenty-two years, we have been able to live in peace. Brown Bear’s offspring number in their thousands, considerably more if you count the patchy offspring of his sisters and his mother that are said to have that same Brown Bear twinkle in their eye. With this army now gathering here at the end of the overgown garden beyond the little empty cottage we are creating a force to be reckoned with; unstoppable.