Gibson Tells

By Merlin Cullinan

Gibson the bear has travelled the globe far and wide as the companion of a high-flying senior executive. For a bear who has seen so much of the world, along the way he has developed a very unworldly philosophy of life. These are the delightful stories of his adventures, rich with words of wisdom, sweet humour and rules to live by that will appeal to the child in all of us - whatever our age.

Escape into a world of kindness and fun, with a new perspective on reality, through the musings of this adventurous furry explorer.

"We all need to follow his little code a bit more - Think, Care, Do, and help each other out. There's no-one else who's going to do it."

www.merlincullinan.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781787190771

Book preview

27

A Children’s Book For All Of Us

Gibson is a very fortunate bear who gets to travel all over the world. We can hear all about what he does and who he sees and meets on his trips.

He describes things just as he sees them, whether they are good or bad, funny or sometimes strange.

He and his friends who you will also meet are very busy most of the time, because he realizes that a lot of people of all ages in many places don’t get enough love and affection and care. He wants to change that.

You can help him in two ways.

The first is by telling him what you think about your own experiences and observations in ways that can help others.

The second is to do what he does, and take time to care more for those who need it most, and that’s all of us.

You can help others with love, or with love and money.

To find out more, go to

www.GibsonTells.com

When you see an * in the text, it means there’s more to see and read about in this website.

1

Gibson is a curious bear. No, he isn’t curious in an odd kind of way. He is simply curious about everything he comes across. There is a lot to be curious about. Right from the start this includes his curiosity about being curious. That means he is ready for all sorts of meanings to come along and introduce themselves. It is just the same with questions.

Both of these could turn up at any time of the day or night at any door or window. They always expect there will be time and space for them, even if there is one of those ‘No Vacancies’ signs up that he’d seen out there. This certainly seemed to be the case for all questions except rhetorical ones. They didn’t really expect answers to anything, so they were never really disappointed.

As he got to know better what people called their languages, and especially the ones he didn’t know already, he came across other curiosities that expected some kind of attention. In some cases they were happy with ears that were turned on. It was usually harder with explanations. They always wanted more time, as if everybody always had enough of it, and some to spare for them. They got so easily upset if you told them that Time was up.

Gibson finds the idea of time ‘being up’ very funny, because to him it could be anywhere all at once if you stopped to think about it. So if you said, Well, time’s up, meaning it’s over, that just made things more complicated. Time could be either up or over, except it couldn’t really be over, because it didn’t stop, even for a second. And if it was over, that meant there was none left. That would be a bit of a nonsense wouldn’t it, because we’re all still here thinking about it, and so it can’t have run out, can it? Apart from all that, the sign on the door said that it would be open at seven, and there wasn’t much point in saying that, waiting to open, if there wasn’t any time for it, was there?

Well now, if we don’t get a move on, all we’ll leave behind are those marks that signal a question, when what we’re really all waiting for is answers.

Gibson doesn’t really know where he came from. He doesn’t think about it very often. If he ever asked, he would usually get a shrug of the shoulders as a reply, and occasionally he would get a Dunno. He just was. He simply is. Sometimes he’d look at maps and indexes but he’d never managed to find a place called Dunno, or Idunno. Anyone who’d ever said anything like that never went on to explain where such a place really might be. He knew better than that, because he was really a rather specially clever bear, but he liked these kinds of games.

Many bears seemed to come from nowhere particular, or at least they rarely let on, even if they did know. There were exceptions of course, like Paddington and darkest Peru. He knew they turned up in windows, or in shops, as well as at stations, or they’d arrived in nurseries or hospitals. Sometimes it seemed they just dropped out of the sky, and they were there when you woke up, ready. What they were ready for was not always clear to all of them. He knew quite a number of bears who had just been lying around waiting for something to happen. Even though many of them had a lot of talents, they weren’t able to use them until they were chosen.

This wasn’t the case with Gibson, because he happens to be an exceptional bear. But for the others, being chosen brought them a special kind of life, shared with others. If they weren’t chosen just now, they stayed in a different state that they called suspended bearimation, so they didn’t get upset about anything while they were waiting for that something to happen.

Waiting could take a long time by some clocks, but if you were temporarily out of time you didn’t notice, which was fine. If you were chosen, you still had choices. You could be peaceful and quiet. You could start to share what you knew, some or all of it, and you could do anything in between. The only thing you couldn’t do was to stay behind, unless you had really very special reasons. If for some reason or accident you were overlooked and not chosen you’d stay suspended until the right time came along. For Gibson, that meant that time could be right sometimes. It must also have meant that time could be wrong. Smart bears don’t ask what time it is, but what kind of time it is. Gibson only uses any kind of time when it is convenient, and that is its purpose.

Gibson thinks convenience is, well, very convenient, as it happens. It is the useful coming together of thoughts and events that gave him The Big Idea. Basically, this meant it was now one of the right times to travel. Not just that, but the right time to go out and see others who shared the same kinds of spaces with him. He wants to know more about what they are like. He wants to know if they have things he doesn’t have. He wants to know if he can help them, and his other friends, in some way or another. He didn’t write things down, because he didn’t need to. As an exceptional bear, if you wanted to remember something you just thought about it and it got stored in the clouds. If you thought about it again it would come back just like before. Even if the sky was blue and there were no clouds above your head, there were always clouds somewhere else. Well, except in certain circumstances. They were generally happy to hold on to your thoughts, or pass them round until you needed them again. The good thing was that the clouds kept your memories and your dreams washed and fresh and clean. When they decided to rain or snow, they would then share your thoughts and wishes in streams and rivers, ice and the sea. In these ways they would sit there waiting to be formed into clouds again, refreshed, so your thoughts never had to be far away. You could forget things for a very long time if you were counting, but water was very patient, and it was always happy to hold on to thoughts whatever else it was doing.

So on this day he thought about what he was going to do, and he sent the clouds a thought that would hold all his discoveries together. He decided to call this experiment "Gibson Tells", because he wanted everyone he met to tell him things about what they felt and saw and thought, just like he did. He’d already decided others might want to know what he’d been told as well, so they could learn, or laugh, or be confused, depending on where they stood, and how they saw things around them, because in the beginning, and in the middle, and in the end, many of us still see things differently.

Unlike most of us, who can’t choose our parents, Gibson didn’t have that to think about. He didn’t have parents. He didn’t wonder about them, or miss them, because he just was, and that’s a fact. But he already knew from his friends that most people not only had parents to start with, but that they also had some of his friends as their own friends, and often that for them had been a very long time.

Out there in the world they lived in, there were all sorts of stories and experiences his friends collected. They came back showing clear signs of what had happened to some of them. If you simply took bears alone, there were big clouds full of extraordinary tales of luck and love, adventure, and in some cases misfortune. Some bears came back from that world after only two or three days. They found that they had been accidentally forgotten or lost. Some had fallen out of car doors or had slipped out of buggies or small hands. Their expectations of long service and duty were over really quickly. Some unlucky ones got pushed aside and were ignored. They spent ages sleeping and waiting just in case something happened.

Then there were the ones who were instantly loved and adored, ones who got special care and attention. Many of these were known as Much Loved Bears, and they worked for years without ever once complaining about what happened to them. They gave love and comfort. They gave ears to listen to dreams and frustrations. They gave arms and legs and heads and bodies to hug, and they slept every night with the ones they had been chosen to stay with. In all the action and the travelling and being snuggled up, they’d sometimes lose a leg, or even two, an arm, or both. Others might lose an eye or a bit of a nose, and their fur might get all patchy and thin. Yet all through that they never stopped loving or being loved, even if sometimes they were shouted at or scolded, or even if, as time went by, they started to be separated a little more from their loved ones.

They’d eventually come back to Bearland looking tired. Some were like soldiers who had served long and loyally. They’d come back with bandages and slings and stitches from all the things that had happened to them. But every bear that came back, even with one eye, or barely the mark of one, still radiated love and affection.