OMG!

'Pooh?'

'Hmm?'

'Did you know, the sixth of October is National Poetry Day.'

'Oh, really?'

'Yes.'

'What happens, then?'

'Poetry comes back.'

'From where?'

'From exerting, says Tigger, an indescribable but nourishing glow in the collective psyche.'

'So from lying down the back of the sofa till someone says, hang on, where's Poetry?'

'Well, he does forget his medicine sometimes.'

'Does it know it's the sixth?  I mean, might it turn up late.'

'It might do, but that's allowed, apparently.'

'Is it?'

'Poetic licentiousness.'

'Fancy!'

'But this year there's lots of support for it.  Their BBC is promoting it in a big way.'

'Ah…so that'd be Huw Edwards reciting 'Three Blind Mice' just before 'the news wherever you are…if you know where you are…and if you're halfway between where and where else, you get a double helping.   Ta for the licence fee.'

'Even better.  They've got those ladies from Strictly Locate and Flog doing some famous poems.  Like that one…oh…the one about calorie-count anxiety.'

'The Waist Land.'

'Yes.  They do a double-act.'

'Well there's a thing.  How does it start?'

'Erm.. So April is, like, totally the ever-so-not-nicest month.

         OMG, Claudia!

         Oh, yes, as it goes…lilacs get bred

         Shut the back door!  Out of what?

         Out of land that's not living.

         You mean land like Prince and Bowie?

         I so do.

         Shut up!

'I can't wait, Piglet.'

'Of course you can, Pooh.'

Trousseau Distressed

'Well, Tigger says everyone's excited.'

'I'm sorry, Piglet, I still fail to see why.'

'Because it's back!'

'Back?'

'Back on tv.'

'Sounds a funny old name, Poldark.  What's it about?

'Nobody knows…'

'Really?'

'Or cares…'

'What?'

'Well, actually, nothing happens.'

'So why is everyone excited?'

'Because at certain specified points the main gentleman with the lottest of words…he…well, he…'

'He what?'

'Gets his trousseau out.'

'What?'

'Out, yes, his trousseau.'

'I would have thought his bride-to-be had the trousseau.'

'Me too.'

'Well can't she slope on and get it out?'

'That might provoke comment.'

'What, even more than him getting it out?'

'Mmm…even stevens, Tigger reckons.'

'Seems a bit churlish, him getting hers out.'

'No, no, it's his.  A symbol of flux, Tigger says, a mark of fluidity.'

'Sounds like they need the dry cleaners.  So he's done this before, this gentleman?'

'In the last series.'

'Hmm…doesn't sound very committed…'

'To what?'

'Oh, for pity's sake, Piglet--marriage!  If he's spent weeks just sloping on with a suitcase, flinging it open and getting his trousseau out, filling the screen with frilly shirts and red commabonds--'

'I don't think he--'

'Doesn't sound like he's in a hurry to tie the splice, is what I'm saying.'

'Well…you could be right…or she isn't.'

'Or she isn't.  They might be ready to go each time, script, director all set to yell through a megawatt, and she says "Hey, love, forget all that, why don't you just go on and do a bit of trousseau-distressing", and he says "You reckon?" and she says "Oooh, yeah, you know how I love the way you rummage about in your--"'

'Perhaps I'll tell Eeyore to give it a miss.'

'Oh…why?'

'Well, it's set in Cornwall.  He thought it was about a donkey sanctuary.'