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.