A while back a dear friend from school may or may not have asked me online what i missed the most when i was on a plane. i thought for a bit about the gadgets and treats i love to take with me.. ipod, iphone, noise-noise cancelling headphones, sweets, the national enquirer (MIB swore by it!)...
and i realised the one thing that seemed the most far away when i was cruising at 38,000 feet is a hug so i told him.
*ok. i am going to send you £50 and i want you to promise you will buy a teddy bear for your next trip.*
the idea was so sweet, so sincere and selfless that i was profoundly touched.
for three weeks i trawled toy shops around the world testing the hugs of their bears. i had almost given up hope of finding a teddy bear that could double as a pillow with no protruding plastic appendages and resigned to design my own online (http://www.buildabear.com/)
when randomly a motorway service station in the UK yielded this big, soft, grey hippo with happy eyes and a glaring yellow £9.99 nailed to his ear who beckoned me over.
*Hullo* he said. *I'm Buttons and i just wanted to make sure you had noticed the hook attached to my head that would allow my to swing liberally from your Tumi.*
*oh! why thanks for drawing that to my attention Buttons. How do you feel about Brazil?*
*'Ce fala portuges?*
*Brilliant..you're in!*
My new road manager/pillow/hug dispenser hooked himself onto my belt and was the ultimate swinging hipster. A few odd looks at Heathrow turned into bemused questions at Galeao.
*is that your teddy bear?* a well-dressed, fellow traveller in his mid forties asked.
i should have said, *no fuckface he belongs to the kid i just beat up over there* but i smiled sweetly and nodded afirmatively.
*cute* he said.
*i must be mental* i thought.
i could try to convince myself that the vision of a 32 year old woman carrying a teddy bear around the airport was an anarchic challenge to people's grasp of the mundane or that i was confronting myself by making a tit of myself in public with no shame. perhaps not.
on the plane Buttons came into his own, a veritable hugging, back-cushioning, squishable reminder not to take myself too seriously.
when i arrived in Rio i was whisked swiftly by my favourite driver to the new WILD cave. having been there before i knew what to expect but was still overwhelmed with bliss when i walked through the door to gaze straight over the cliff, past the little islands dotted off the coast and into the deep blue sea. The major difference from my usual arrival into a hotel where i plug in the laptop and flop on the bed was that there were two cute guys sharing the house with me. so it was bad enough that i walked in to greet them covered in airplane air but the teddy bear sitting on my bag didn't really enhance my pro dj international woman of mystery image...
the boys looked dubiously at the hippo at first but soon warmed to his likeable face especially as his alcohol intake was so low leaving all the more mojitos for us.
i went off to play and stay in some hotels and whilst back on my own i skyped an ex-bf
who caught sight of the teddy bear on the bed.
*did you bring that with you all the way from the uk?* he enquired.
when i told him i had he sighed. *christ, that's a bit needy isn't it?*
i was horrified.
*OMG what should i do? Burn it?*
*Burn it?!? that's one extreme to the other. can't you find some middle ground?*
i thought burning something that symbolised my needs or neediness sounded like a good idea.. still, i resolved to chuck Buttons from the stage at my next gig; perhaps filming it for a farewell youtube stage dive.
as it happened a girl who comes to most of my shows in brazil and who always brings me a little gift appeared, so i gave the hippo to her and she seemed chuffed to bits. i bid farewell to Buttons as his adventure with me ended there and i thanked him heartily for the hugs and support and indicated that they had obviously worked wonders as i no longer felt the need to turn to a piece of stuffed cloth for either.
i returned to the cave busting to tell the boys about the stage diving hippo and to reaffirm my independence but they seemed kind of shocked when i told them. what's worse than a grown woman carrying a teddy around? a grown woman prepared to sacrifice her inner child to the mob without so much as batting an eyelid perhaps.
mental note to self: keep own counsel and give more hugs!
bubbles
xxx