Story time

[den]

The moon shone clear to the bottom of the river. We could see the gravel of the bed and the weeds waving in the lazy current. A huge murray-cod swam from the black shadow of the bridge and sucked down something on the surface.

"He's beautiful," said my companion.

I looked at her guiltily. My first thought had been 'that would make a great feed with a beer.' "Yes, he is," I said.

We stared at the water a while longer, then she surprised me by saying "Pooh sticks."

"It does." Oops. Wrong answer. "What?"

"This would make a great place to play pooh sticks." She turned to me. "Don't you remember pooh sticks?"

I shook my head.

"A.A. Milne. E.G Shepherd. "

I had the sudden feeling she was playing word association football and had scored 2 goals already. "I'm sorry. Maybe the wine-"

"Children's author from earlier this century. He wrote the House at Pooh Corner. E.G Shepherd illustrated it. 'The more it snows-'"

"Tiddly-pom," I finished. "I remember now. Everyone drops a stick on the up-stream side of the bridge, and the first one out the other side wins."

"Yes!"

And so we played pooh-sticks until dawn. It was a wonderfully silly thing to do.