The Boating Adventures of Sonning Bear Part 1. Sonning finds a home
carried him up there, to have for dinner later. The bear had seen them catch other furry animals out in the fields, which were not much smaller than he was. In front of his tree was a little patch of green grass and, in front of that, there was a big, shiny river. The small bear watched as a big white bird which had been sailing along on the water started to flap its wings, then to run along the surface of the river and finally to lift into the sky. It flew over his tree and its wings made a funny whistling noise as they swept through the air. The bear had seen it eating grass and river weeds so he didn’t think it ate small bears. He waved at it, hoping it would rescue him before the forked-tailed birds saw him, but it didn’t seem to see him.
He decided that, although he was hanging in a tree and swaying backwards and forwards in the breeze, he probably wasn’t a leaf. He could see that he had furry paws and a furry tummy. He could just about focus his eyes close enough to it to see that he had a furry nose too. He realised that he must be an animal of some sort. He was, in fact, a small beige bear. He was wearing a blue and white striped jersey and it was this that held him in the tree. A long twig was threaded through the back of it and the small bear was suspended underneath. The small bear couldn’t remember how he came to be in the tree. He thought someone, or something, must have put him there, but he had no idea why. He wondered if one of the big birds with big, sharp beaks, nasty claws and forked tails had Page 18
‘Oh dear!’ said the bear. He wondered if the river might have put him in the tree during a flood, but he couldn’t remember being carried along in the water and although he was a little bit damp, he thought he would be wetter if he had been swimming for his life. There were people out on the river but they weren’t swimming. They were in boats. Some of the boats were very big with lots of people on them, being noisy. Some were very small and fast, moving over the surface of the river like pond-skater insects, with the people in them pulling long wooden sticks backwards and forwards. Some were sleek, white boats with smartly-dressed people on them, laughing loudly. Some were long, thin boats which sat low in the water. They were brightly-painted in all sorts of cheerful colours and some even had flowers or vegetables on the roof. One of these boats was coming close to his tree. It was blue with a cream-coloured roof and there were red flowers growing in pots on the roof and painted on the side. A man jumped KNOBSTICKS