Old Bear

As I mentioned the other day when I showed you her retirement card, one of my colleagues, the school librarian, is retiring. I started picking up little bits and pieces for her retirement present over a period of months. Since we are both great charity shoppers, I knew she wouldn't mind if some of the items in her present had come from that source, and that's exactly where I got Old Bear.

Margaret is a great fan of the Old Bear book and tv series, so much so that she replaced the photo on her ID badge with Old Bear (and I'm not sure that anyone ever noticed!). So when I saw this wooden bear I just had to pick it up.

I scanned in my work ID badge and replaced the photo with Old Bear, then printed it out at a smaller size and covered it in clear sticky-backed plastic. I hung it around his neck with a red ribbon.

I also added a few other charity shop finds that alluded to her advancing age! The book The Seniors' Survival Guide was perfect, because much of it is about technology, and Margaret tends to be on the phone to us most days about problems with the printer (nicknamed Penelope) or computers! In fact, if the phone rings before 9am, we usually guess straight away that it is her! And since she has often admired my "Drink tea and read books" pin, but is more of a coffee drinker, I jumped at the chance to get her Fable and Black's "Drink coffee and read books" pin as soon as it became available (and a few other wee things from there too!).