Something beginning with B…

My friends like to do these random surveys/fill in the sentence/whatever things. They send me them by email or post them as Facebook notes. Mostly I just ignore them but I liked the look of this one so I decided to steal it for blogging purposes.
Here are the rules:
1. Tell us your first name: Beverley
2. Complete the following statements. All answers must begin with the first letter of your name.

1) 4 letter word: Bell
2) Girl’s name: Bettina (I’m assuming using my own name would be cheating…)
3) Boy’s name: Benjamin
4) An Occupation: Banker
5) A colour: Blue
6) Something you wear: Bra (It was the first thing that came to mind ok!)
7) Beverage: Bacardi
8 ) Food: Burger
9) Something found in a bathroom: Bath
10) A city: Barcelona
11) A country: Brazil
12) Song with a girl’s name in the title: Black Betty
13) Something you shout: Boo!
14) Celebrity: uuhh… Bryan Adams
15) Cartoon character: Bugs Bunny
16) Flower: Bluebell
17) Animal: Bear
18) Fruit: Banana
19) A book title: Bloomability (by Sharon Creech)
20) A film title: Breakfast Club (OK, so technically it’s The Breakfast Club, but “the” doesn’t count… right?)

OK, now it’s over to you dear readers. If you’d like to join in just leave me a comment with a link to your blog (so I can come and see your list) then get memeing.

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Happy Birthday Paddington!

Google UK just told me Paddington, the marmelade loving bear featured in the books by Michael Bond, is 50, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to say Happy Birthday to one of my favourite bears.

I used to have a Paddington Bear when I was little. He was about 15 centimetres high with a red hat and a blue duffle coat that could be fastened with real wooden toggles. He was brilliant. I knitted him a scarf once. I was about 6 or 7 and someone had bought me a kids knitting set for Christmas (with red plastic needles). It was probably my Grandma – she was always into knitting. I got some bright pink wool to go with it so I decided I was going to knit a scarf. I had only knitted a tiny, miniscule scarf (maybe 10 centimetres long) when i got bored of it, so I announced that it was going to be a scarf for Paddington, as if that had been my intention all along. And so it became Paddington’s scarf. Not too long after that both Paddington and scarf went missing – I suspect it happened during our move from Northern Ireland back to England. Lots of stuff went missing during our various moves. I was quite upset about losing Paddington. After all, I had loved him enough to knit him his very own scarf.

Now I have a new Paddington. I spotted him at Heathrow airport the week before last and told Jan, who doesn’t know the Paddington bear books, the story of how I knitted my Paddington a scarf and lost him. I must have sounded pretty nostalgic because Jan promptly counted out the last of his English money to go towards buying me a new Paddington. Naturally I chose one with a red hat and blue duffle coat – some had them the other way round but in my memory Paddington’s coat was blue! My new bear is holding a briefcase and has a label round his neck – “Please look after this bear”. His toggles aren’t real, but that’s ok. I still love him, and I love my boyfriend for spontaneously deciding to buy him for me.

Happy Birthday Paddington Bear! May you continue to eat marmelade sandwiches for another 50 years.