In fact, that was how he came to have such an unusual name for a bear, for Paddington was the name of the station. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform. He had never before written a children's story: Several months later, Bond, a struggling writer, sat down at his typewriter and began a story about Paddington "just to get my fingers going on the keys," he said. "He sat on the mantelpiece, and we'd say 'Hello, Paddington,' when we came in the room," Bond recalled with a chuckle. Bond's father-in-law made him a bed his wife Brenda sewed him a duffle coat. They named him Paddington, because they lived near the London Underground's Paddington station, and quickly he became a part of the family. Bond impulsively bought him as a "stocking stuffer" for his wife, he recalled on a recent visit to Chicago. Rather than waiting outside for the next one, he ducked into Selfridges, one of London's largest department stores.Īnd that's where he saw him: the last teddy bear sitting on a shelf in the toy department. Michael Bond was a 30-year-old cameraman, on the way home from his job at the BBC in London when he missed a bus on Oxford Street on Christmas Eve in 1957. CHICAGO - If it hadn't been for a missed bus on a rainy Christmas Eve, the world might never have met Paddington Bear.
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