The Pooh Also Rises by Alan Coren

A.A.Milne gets an Ernest Hemingway makeover in this extract from the new anthology celebrating the brilliant humorist and Times columnist, who died last year.



It snowed hard that winter. It was the winter they all went up to the Front. You could get up early in the morning, if you were not wounded and forced to lie in your bed and look at the ceiling and wonder about the thing with the women, and you could see them going up to the Front, in the snow. When they walked in the snow, they left tracks, and after they had gone the snow would come down again and pretty soon the tracks would not be there any more. That is the way it is with snow. Pooh did not go up to the Front that winter. Nor did he lie in bed and look at the ceiling, although last winter he had lain in bed and looked up at the ceiling, because that was the winter he had gone up to the Front and got his wound. It had snowed that winter, too.

This winter he could walk around. It was one of those wounds that left you able to walk around. It was one of those wounds that did not leave you much more.

Pooh got up and he went out into the snow and he went to see Piglet. Piglet had been one of the great ones, once. Piglet had been one of the poujadas, one of the endarillos, one of the nogales. He had been one of the greatest nogales there had ever been, but he was not one of the greatest nogales any more. He did not go up to the Front, either.

Piglet was sitting at his usual table, looking at an empty glass of enjarda.

‘I thought you were out,' said Pooh.

‘No,' said Piglet. ‘I was not out.'

‘You were thinking about the wound?' said Pooh.

‘No,' said Piglet. ‘I was not thinking about the wound. I do not think about the wound very much, any more.'

They watched them going up to the Front, in the snow.

‘We could go and see Eeyore,' said Pooh.

‘Yes,' said Piglet. ‘We could go and see Eeyore.'

They went out into the snow.

‘Do you hear the guns?' said Pooh.

‘Yes,' said Piglet. ‘I hear the guns.'

When they got to Eeyore's house, he was looking at an empty glass of ortega. They used to make ortega by taking the new orreros out of the ground very early in the morning, before the dew had dried, and crushing them between the mantemagni, but they did not make it that way any more. Not since the fighting up at the Front.

‘Do you hear the guns?' said Eeyore.

‘Yes,' said Pooh. ‘I hear the guns.'

‘It is still snowing,' said Piglet.

‘Yes,' said Eeyore. ‘That is the way it is.'

‘That is the way it is,' said Pooh.

Rural Reading

Yesterday morning, as I was reading up on the recent Nobel Laureate, I noticed that one of his books that had actually been translated into English was printed by David Godine, a small, fiercely independent publisher based in Boston. They consistently keep a clever list of vaguely obscure works in handsome, durable editions. Once I saw the book's cover, I remembered that we stocked it at the SJC Bookstore, which in turn made me recall several titles by the same publisher which we did not stock. In our move, however, I completely forgot about them. So, in the late afternoon rain I went downtown to the Ann Arbor Public Library and checked out First Person Rural, a collection of essays by "sometime farmer" Noel Perrin. Although they were written for a couple of country magazines and the New Yorker in the seventies, they still offer sound farming advice for the uninitiated.

This morning, after I fixed Melody's lunch and she left for work, I sat down with the rest of the coffee and read the whole thing through by noon. As Mr Perrin extolled the various pleasures of agrarian life, I laughed out loud more than once. For example, he opens "Buying a Chainsaw," with this paragraph: "If I were to move to an old-fashioned farm, everything quaint and hand made like a scene from Old Sturbridge Village, and could bring just one piece of modern machinery with me, I wouldn't hesitate a second. I'd bring my chainsaw. It's noisy, it's dangerous, it pollutes the air -- and I love it." He then goes on to describe what constitutes a good saw, how to buy one, and why you inevitably need a good serviceman. I probably like the essay as much as I do because it reminds me of other amateur farmers I know, perhaps especially Dr Garner. The next essay, however, is even better. He describes how, after much trial and error, he arrived at the perfect fencepost. This is what he suggests:

First learn to recognize all the trees you have. If you don't already know how to chainsaw, learn to. Then start looking for stands of young trees that need thinning. In the absence of cedar, wild cherry or tamarack is best, though both hemlock and white pine will do. ... If you're smart, you will have cut all these posts where you can get pretty close to them with a pickup truck, which you now drive out there. Bring your wife (or husband, or unsuspecting houseguest) and an extra pair of ear protectors. Open the tailgate and load the first three or four posts in the back of the truck. While he or she holds the first post steady, you sharpen it with your chain saw. This amounts to cutting a slice off each side the full length of the chain saw blade, getting the victim in the back of the truck to turn the post 90 degrees, and cutting off two more slices. The whole procedure takes less than a minute. It leaves, incidentally, a pile of fluffy shavings, which children find irresistible.

Of course, now that I know how to make a fencepost, all I need is some land and a little livestock.