Whispering Smith Column published in the Littlehampton Gazette January 26th 2017

Hush, hush whisper who dares, Christopher Robin is saying his prayers…

Some mornings you wake up with the blues thinking dark thoughts of a world gone mad and other mornings you wake up full of energy and hope. I sort of usually settle for somewhere in between the two, like Winnie the Pooh, buried somewhere deep down as a glass half- full kind of dreamer, I am an optimist. The 18^th of January was National Winnie the Pooh day and I forgot which was strange because Pooh and his little hums and sayings are very close to my heart. One of my favourites being: ‘People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.’ But top of my list has to be: ‘Sometimes I just sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits…’ that being still one of my favourite pastimes. As a youngster, I was, quite understandably I thought, not overly enamoured with my given Christian name of Christopher Robin, I asked that I be called Kit after one of my childhood western heroes Christopher ‘Kit’ Carson. Only my chum Richard Mann called me by that name and I believe it to have been an act of friendship rather than an understanding of my odd request. My mother asked me one time why I did not like the name she had chosen and I said I thought it sounded ‘soppy’ not a word you hear much these days but you get my drift. I hope in later years I did tell her how much I grew to love it but not sure that I ever got around to it – a lesson to learn there for children everywhere. My mother was a bit weird on names and thought Adam-Smith was too ‘high fallutin’ and always registered my siblings and me at school and elsewhere without the ‘Adam.’ However, I had to use it when I enlisted in the RAF and a good move it was as I was always first in line at the pay parade, thanks, Mum.

Pictured:Ernest H. Shepard’s classic Pooh so much nicer than the Disney version…