spring cleaning, you know.”
“Mine too,” said Rabbit.
“That’s a shame,” said Christopher Robin. “What about everyone else?”
But suddenly it seemed that nobody at all was available anymore. Nor did anyone seem to mind.
Pooh had said nothing against school, because he was a Perfect. But a few days later, when they were having elevenses at his house, and Pooh was hoping Christopher Robin would hurry up so that they weren’t late for twelvses, he found himself saying: “I didn’t really want to go to school, you know.”
“Oh?” prompted Christopher Robin, buttering toast.
“It didn’t seem the right sort of thing to do on a sunny day. But ... but ...” He wanted to add something about being a Perfect, and not being one any longer and how school had been...well...
“I feel the same way myself sometimes,” said Christopher Robin carelessly. “By the way, though, the thing about being a Prefect is, you don’t stop being one when you’re not at school.”
“You don’t?” said Pooh, so interested that the pawful of honey stopped halfway to his mouth.
“So I was going to mention that you ought really to go on wearing your armband, at least on special occasions. Sort of like soldiers and medals.”
So Winnie-the-Pooh did just that. And he was not the only one. If you visited Eeyore when he wasn’t expecting you, you would sometimes find him in his gown and mortarboard, using the tassle to keep flies away, and the blackboard to practice his tap dancing.
And as for Lottie, she could not keep her mind on anything for very long, and when Piglet asked her a week or so later about the Academy, she answered: “Academy, darling? What do you mean?”
Otters are like that.
Chapter Eight
in which we are introduced to the game of cricket
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN had had a birthday. There had been cards with laughing kittens wishing him a happy day, and the usual presents: socks and gloves and writing paper and a fat book called 1001 Things to Do in the Holidays.
Christopher Robin had used the writing paper to write letters saying thank you for the socks and the gloves. He had not found this easy, thinking that a letter saying: would have done the job nicely, but it seemed that people wanted bits about the weather and where he had come in math, and I do hope you are well.
Dear Whoever,
Thank you for the socks/gloves.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher Robin
Having put the socks and gloves in the very back of the drawer, he turned to 1001 Things to Do in the Holidays. On page three it suggested clearing out the potting shed, and on page five it suggested putting toys in boxes with sticky labels on them, and on page seven it suggested: Why not make a list of all the people you most admire from your history books?
Christopher Robin did not know what it said on page nine, because after reading pages even he had closed the book and never opened it again.
But there had been one present that he had liked very much. This had been a cricket bat, a cricket ball, and two sets of stumps with bails that assembled into a wicket. There was also a pair of batting gloves, some shin pads, a pair of wicket-keeping gloves, a scoring book with pencils, a pencil sharpener, an eraser, a tin of linseed oil, and some squares of cotton for rubbing the oil into the bat. All of which fitted very neatly into a splendid sausage-shaped bag. Everything you needed to play cricket.
This time, when he wrote his thank-you letter, he had added pictures in coloured crayons, and his batting average for the past two summers, and signed the letter, Love from Christopher Robin. And he meant it too.
On this particular day—it may have been a Tuesday, because it often was—he brought the bag to a clearing in the Forest halfway between his house and Owl’s house and setup the stumps and the bails on a patch of ground which was not too bumpy. Then he went around the edge of the playing area with a bag of stones, laying them out to mark the boundary. It was not long before most of the others had gathered around, and Christopher Robin began to explain the rules. “Cricket is a game between two teams. Each team bats once—that’s called an innings—and tries to score as many runs as possible.
“The batter faces the bowler from the opposite team, who bowls the ball at him like this.” Christopher Robin turned his arm and