It’s a perfect Poohsticks bridge: just high enough to make the drop interesting, just wide enough and the stream just slow enough to make the contest last for just the right amount of time. The setting is easy, secluded and free of any Tiggers inclined to bounce you into the water.
So Eddie and I paused on our evening wild walk and played best of three and he won the first two through superior technique and so we passed onwards to the waiting car in great good humour.
I have read a lot and written a lot about nature deprivation: about the vast numbers of children who never have any wild play. They are prevented by a mixture of television, work, computers, vanishing open spaces and paedophiliaphobia. There are stats that show how little modern children get to play outdoors. The Oxford Junior Dictionary has junked words like adder in favour of words like MP3 player.
There should be stats about Poohsticks. How many children, I wonder, have never played Poohsticks? How many children have never had this teasing, jesting relationship with the wild world? Poohsticks is good not just because it’s a game but because it’s also a relationship with a stream, a stick, the whole nonhuman world.
It’s a small thing that represents an aching loss. It’s all very well to love the wild world in theory, because you’ve read about it and seen it on television. But until you’ve got your hands dirty and your boots muddy, until you turned to the other side of the bridge and seen your stick come out ahead of your friend’s or your brother’s or your dad’s stick – you don’t really know what you’re dealing with.
Poohsticks should be compulsory for all children. Much more important than maths and spelling.
Yes, yes, yes…now that our child’s into her late teens, we cherish all the more the knowledge that we spent time playing poohsticks, gathering seashells, collecting tent caterpillars, and the like!
Whatever happens now it’s not your fault! Best wishes to you all.
My middle son lives in Leuven, Belgium, we played Poohsticks just a few weeks ago, shrieks of competitive laughter all round – he’s 26!
I think we should lobby for a Olympic status for Poohsticks!
Hear,hear! Gosh you were lucky to get away with ‘best of three’,
My wife says we should have a national Pooh Sticks day, or week.
What an excellent idea, count me in when the campaign starts.
Urban Pooh Sticks
I have played Pooh sticks with my children and my grandchildren. In Newquay in Cornwall there are gardens with a stream that runs down to the Gannel. It meanders through the gardens and is criss-crossed by paths with little bridges. We experiment with a variety of ‘sticks’ sticks, leaves feathers, all easily found in the gardens. We are very competitive even to the extent of risking falling in by leaning over to throw the sticks under the bridges. We have had to limit the drops to three per bridge when the time allowed is only an hour or so. As the children get older they compete to see who can get the wettest too.
Never played Pooh sticks as a child (or read “Christopher Robin”, etc) as a child – not part of my urban world pr my parents. But with our own children…YES!! Great fun it was too.
Problem with making Pooh sticks an Olympic sport is, despite inventing the game, would GBR be better than the rest? Or even be able to get into the final?
Even tho’ the game’s the thing.