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 Yes,
it’s true. This month marks Bikwil’s sixth anniversary.
The
phrase, of course, is A.A. Milne’s. Now We Are Six (1927)
was the second of the four immensely popular books of stories and verse
that featured Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and their friends.
Contrary
to established legend, Milne hardly ever read the poems and stories to
his children. He preferred to amuse them by reading from the works of
P.G. Wodehouse. Mind you, it’s a safe bet that the kids would have been
much older than six before they found the following passage about a
“beautiful baby” contest funny.
There
were, it seemed, to be three prizes and about the first one there could
be no question at all. It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother
with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a
spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine. Just to see those
eyebrows, Freddie tells me, was to hear the heads dropping into the
basket, and he had no hesitation, as I say, in declaring her progeny the
big winner.
The
second and third prizes were a bit more difficult, but after some
consideration he awarded them to two other female plug-uglies with
suspicious bulges in their stockings.
[ From Noblesse Oblige, one of the stories in Young Men in
Spats ]
Anyway,
here’s to Bikwil’s seventh year! Your Time Starts Now. Onward and
upward.
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