Fed up with the news and even more distressed by a week of trying to get our heads around all the evil in the world, it was time for some R&R. Something that wasn’t too challenging. We plumped for Paddington Bear.
What a story, what a movie and what a timely message:
- Life before ‘discovery’
Forty years before the familiar story begins we see black and white footage of an explorer ‘discovering’ a group of intelligent bears in Darkest Peru. The bears, who befriended Montgomerie Clyde, become fond of marmalade, were told how wonderfully welcoming London is and assured that if they ever visited they would be most welcome. He leaves them his hat, which is Uncle Bear’s treasured possession.
- Life after the discoverer leaves
Montgomerie Clyde is summoned home by the Geographic society, leaving the bear couple, who have adopted their orphan nephew, to learn English via gramophone records and dream of visiting London one day.
The bears live in a fantastic forest paradise, leading an idyllic life in a tree house fitted with eccentric and unfamiliar things, producing tons of their favourite food – marmalade.
- Disaster strikes
An earthquake. The aunt and young bear make it to the shelter but the old uncle dies (cue ‘weeping’ from me). The forest is flattened, their home is gone.
- What to do?
Auntie remembers Montgomerie Clyde and his tales of London and the big welcome awaiting all visitors. She packs the young bear off with a supply of marmalade as a stowaway in a lifeboat on board a cargo ship. He makes it to England and onward to London in a mail sack and emerges in Paddington.
- Please look after this bear
The bear had been sent off in the hope of a better life. With no other choice available to him, armed with a smattering of a new language and stock phrases about the weather and please and thank you, he’s looking forward to finding a home where he can belong.
- The rude awakening
He arrives on the platform during rush hour. He’s at knee level and is seen by no-one. He is totally bewildered, pushed around and disillusioned. Sitting on his suitcase, about to tuck into his emergency marmalade sandwich, he’s accosted by pigeons!
But help is at hand. A truly dysfunctional family, the Browns, pass by. Mr Brown is convinced that the bear is a con – somebody pretending to be a bear, a needy scrounger ready to nick his cash and endanger his family. Mrs Brown is more of an artistic, idealistic type and persuades him that they should show mercy for a night at least.
They can’t speak ‘bear’ so they name him Paddington
- Unintended disasters
A sequence of hilarious disasters later, as a result of ignorance and cultural differences, and the dysfunctional, moody kids start engaging with Paddington and each other and the family starts having fun. That is until the villain, helped by a bigoted neighbour, attempts a kidnap and causes a fire that sends Mr Brown back into his protectionist mode. Nothing Paddington can say or do will convince him that there really was an intruder. He’s banished.
- In exile
Paddington, still convinced that the London his aunt described exists, sets off on a quest to find Montgomery Clyde. Unfortunately he’s dead and has left a very bitter taxidermist daughter who resents Darkest Peru and wants to stuff the bear.
- The remorseful Browns
The post-Paddington Brown family members revert to their pre-Paddington dysfunctional selves and the wise granny points out to them that they probably needed the bear more than he needed them. Having been given a tip-off from their bigoted neighbour who’s had a pang of conscience, they set off to rescue him from his fate.
- ….and they live happily ever after
After an improbable adventure in the British Museum, the evil daughter’s plot is thwarted and she is sentenced to community service. Paddington goes home with his new family. Paddington writes to his aunt in the care home for old bears telling her that “In London nobody’s alike, which means everyone fits in.”
If only. Having intended to escape the misery of the news – we realised that we’d been watching the ultimate refugee story that can be replicated in our time:
People were minding their own business in their own bit of the globe before the ‘explorers’ came. Most explorers weren’t as benign as Montgomery Clyde.
They introduced their own tastes and preferences and then left, leaving the people in their modified bits of the globe but with the impression that the land of the explorer is filled with milk and honey and the streets paved with gold. Where people will be as friendly and welcoming as they themselves once were. They even try to learn words and expressions in the other language.
And then unexpected disaster strikes. Their world caves in. What do they do? The ideal scenario would be to stay but that’s not possible.
Off they go – leaving their elderly relatives and everything that is familiar – with a hope that they will be welcomed and that they will find another home…………
I’m not going to flog this to death. You know where I’m going with it.
Not everybody that turns up is a scrounger, an imposter and a threat to our families. Has it occurred to us that we are quite weird ourselves; that through the eyes of others we may well seem very dysfunctional?
Mr Brown had a point – it’s not normal to have a talking bear living in your house and there were risks attached. But the most ridiculous disasters happened because they hadn’t thought things through from a perspective other than their own. Did they really think that a bear would know how to use a bathroom? But they adapted and found that it wasn’t so bad after all. No, what they found in fact was that the bear brought them joy and helped them get over themselves.
And thus I fell in love again with Paddington Bear and had a lighter touch insight into the awful refugee crisis.
If only we could all live happily ever after.
Dweud fy nweud II Having my say 