Christmas shopping in Waterstones, I came across a memory card game called We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. I snatched it up and almost ran with it to the till, where I paid the woman with the smug attitude of a connoisseur. If I’d had a cavalry moustache, I’d have twirled the ends. I’d intended wrapping it up and putting it in my grandson Oscar’s stocking, but the wait would have been unbearable. So when I got home, solemn with excitement, I simply handed it to him, and we cleared the decks immediately to play, with Grandad still buttoned into his overcoat.
Do you know the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt? No? You haven’t lived. The grandson and me, we read a lot. We are working our way through the entire literary canon for the under-fours: Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy; Katie Morag Delivers the Mail; Ruby Flew Too!; On the Way Home; Owl Babies; The Gruffalo; The Day Louis Got Eaten. And of all of them, our all-time favourite is We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
A young family — Mum, Dad, the kids, the collie — leave home and go on a bear hunt. ‘We’re going on a bear hunt,’ they sing, in case they forget. ‘We’re going to catch a big one. It’s a beautiful day! We’re not scared!’ Along the way they meet obstacles: tall grass (‘Swishy swashy!’), a chest-deep river (Splash splosh!), a muddy estuary (Squelch squerch!), a dark forest (Stumble trip!). Finally they arrive at the entrance to a bear cave. Suddenly no longer quite as blasé as they were before about hunting bears, they tiptoe into the cave, where, at the far end, they encounter an enormous bear just woken up.
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