Return to the Hundred Acre Wood

2008 certainly was the year for dredging-up old franchises and creating sequels. Stallone got out the body oil for another, if less mobile, outing for Rambo. Indiana Jones proved that archeologists approaching retirement can still run around if they have to. Mulder and Scully were presumably allowed a secondment from all the Terror-watching the FBI does to go and look for some aliens, whilst Batman did a little bit of running around.

Now 2009 looks to be going the same way with the announcement that Winnie the Pooh is making a comeback after 80 years.

Titled ‘Return to the Hundred Acre Wood’ I assume it will be in tune with the latest thinking on childrens’ books. Only this week OfSted argued that everything needs to be kept interesting and relevant to capture the imagination of young people. Shortly before Christmas I remember John Humphries on the Today programme grilling authors on the latest idea to make books a little more gritty to get boys away from their 24/7 diet of football and computerised football and into a good book.

With that in mind, I suspect the return to Hundred Acre Wood will be just that. I would imagine by now the wood has had it’s green belt status downgraded and a commuter village built on top of it. Piglet will be dodging the cars on the new Hundred Acre Wood Bypass to visit his good friend Pooh, trying desperately hard, being prone to accidents, not to get squashed. Wol will be confined to his tree. This will be partly because his is the only tree left, and partly because being of some considerable age he’ll want to stay out the way of the anti-social youths that hang around at the bottom of his tree.

Talking of anti-social youths, Tigger will have donned a hoody. Obviously his bouncing has had to be cut down, due the new dangers of hyperdermic needles scattered across the park mixed in with discarding peppermint blobs of gum. Nevertheless, he remains enthusiastic and bounces around with an Ipod blasting out the latest hip-hop beats. Roo and Kanga will have long gone, of course, after the Home Office found irregularities in their paperwork, and they were unable to pass the new Citizenship course on account of them being kangaroos.

Time may not have necessarily been kind to everyone’s favourite characters Pooh and Eeyore. Eeyore will have taken to standing on street corners and muttering to himself, having been cleaned out completely having put all of his money on the stock market. Pooh on the other hand will still be leading the simple life in his little tree house. His honey will now be organic from the latest supermarket, what with the British bee suffering this year at the hands of its European cousins and almost being wiped-out completely. Whilst the families of 2.4 children and people carrier-driving new-build-liking IT consultants move about their everyday lives, Pooh bear now sits on his Ikea sofa watching Jeremy Kyle with the same gaze of befuddlement that we all do.

I look forward to the new book. I think if it’s anything like my prediction, it’ll have enough hard-hitting grittiness to keep the young people happy, with just enough of a smattering of heffalumps to keep us older fans happy.