Your Dum Dum tales
Did you have a Dum Dum? What was it called? What is your story? Share you stories here with us, email them to us here.
Pinky - by Carol
(He used to be pink) was born in 1958.
He has been mine since before I was a year old.
Birthplace, who knows?
He was purchased from a store called Lane Crawford in Hong Kong.
I was born on March 13, 1958 in Kowloon, China.
Pinky and I started our adventures together on a boat
from Hong Kong to Singapore in December 1958.
52 years later, we are still travelling....
Next month, off to Phuket in Thailand
Both of us have 'acquired' some 'character' over the years
but we're both still going strong.
Luckily, I married a man with enough self confidence and Pinky sleeps with us every night, still.
Harold Hare - by Jen
Harold Hare is made of wool. He has knitted, hounds tooth trousers, a cable cord red jumper and is stuffed with Kapok,. He has a mop head and stick…to ensure head upright and appearance of constant alertness. However after years of hugging and adventures the kapok lost it’s effect and the stick became uncomfy..for Harold and me. So after several ‘operations’ (under general anaesthetic, administered on the operating table (ironing board) the mop head & stick were removed and replaced with tights).
Age:
I had him when I was 5. I am now 50. Harold, therefore is 45
Adventures:
Going on the annual family holiday in the 70s, to Woolacombe in dad’s Triumph Dolomite with mum & dad and brother (no roof rack as this fancy car had a vinyl roof….) this is relevant….so my brother and I were strictly limited to one bag each of stuff in the car (clothes etc in a separate suitcases in boot).
Harold was not small, in fact in those days (before the loss of kapok and mop headed attentiveness) he could easily fill a decent sized carrier bag (just about the size of internal luggage allocation for 10 year old).
After begging for Harold to be allowed to come on holiday…and being refused and then firmly refused and finally forbidden as he was ‘too big’, with the additional fob off that he was needed to ‘look after the house’ (right)… there was only one thing to do.
Basically take no ‘stuff’ other than Harold.
To ensure safe transportation and delivery he didn’t make a public appearance until the day after arrival and was produced out of the bag ON THE BEACH.
Ha….too late to send him home now!!
Yes…I still have him.
Go Go
GoGo was a originally a white piece of cotton sheet, but not white for long.
My Mum's Dum Dum was called Goey and I think Gogo was a mispronunciation by me or my brother.
Gogo is no longer with us.
I thought I had simply lost Gogo.
In reality, my older brother had ripped it up into tiny pieces and wedged them into the crevices of the wall inside the old rabbit barn.
He told me this fact with abandon many years later.
Grandma had a honeypot in her kitchen and she kept a spare little piece of Gogo in there for whenever I would stay the night at her house.
I would regularly lose Gogo and I can still remember that feeling of panic, and then relief when mum would find it under my pillow or in a pocket.
Gogo started off quite a large piece of cotton, and gradually shrunk over the years as she was worn away.
By the end Gogo was about the size of my palm,
before meeting the brutal and violent end!!
My twin sisters also had a their own Go Go, which has been reduced from two seperate cotton blankets to one rag which they still fight over!
Beer
My youngest brother had one.
It was a bear (once) that at the end looked like a formless lump of smelly plush.
It used to be a very soft violet beautiful teddy bear and in the beginning it could make music (but that mechanism broke during the years) and the bear ended up being ugly grey/brownish, lost all features, without hardly any fur on it, it went bald so to say.
He had the bear for years, really till he was 8 or even older? Everybody called it Beer (bear in Dutch).
It was impossible to get Thomas sleeping or stop crying when Beer was not around.
If my mom very occasionally could convince him to wash the thing (which Thomas my brother absolutely did not appreciate), he sat as a toddler in front of the washing machine waiting till Beer came out again.
If my parents forgot to pack Beer, the only solution was to drive back home and get it.
I remember my dad once bringing us to the grandparents, having forgotten Beer, having to drive back home and fetch Beer in the middle of the night.
And all the time till Beer arrived Thomas cried.
And my grandmother burned Beer's head once because she was trying to dry Beer above the stove and it fell on to it. So he had a brown spot on the top of is head.
People offered my little brother all kinds of new beautiful cuddle animals but he was absolutely unyielding.
If Thomas needed comfort he held the ear of Beer between two fingers and held the ear under his nose, snuffing at Beer. He literally sniffed all the plush of it.
Beer was repaired endless times, because stuffing came out, he lost ears, eyes etc and in the end did not look like anything recognisable.
Here he is before he became a lump!
Sidney Bear
There were two very important toys in my childhood, there was bobby the cat but the more important of them remains as precious then as it does today. In fact as my years have grown, this bear called Sidney became a very special link to my past.
A bear called Sidney, he is 121 years old and was handed down to me by mum, which was handed to her by her Grandfather. (We called him (Granf). Sidney the bear was taken to WW1 when he was 15 by Granf, a farmers son, his love of horses so great he ended up in Belgium on the front line, looking after the war horses. He slept always with that bear on his person even when he was captured and then rescued. He never talked about the war, just once to my grandma. Sidney the bear came back safely from War but minus an ear & around his neck the many medals Granf was awarded. He was handed to my mum for luck when she started taking her dance exams to become a professional ballerina. Granf put a horseshoe around Sidney bears neck to bring her good fortune.
As long as I can remember Sidney has been in my life, adorning my pillow, perched on my shelves, all seeing, all knowing. There at every juncture, of life's twists and turns.
Sidney bear is about 30 cm long, he has a fixed gaze with a down turned mouth, he is nut brown in colour and has always had a distinctive kind of dusty smell. Sometimes there is still a whiff of frankincense from the beautiful handmade box my mum used to keep him in, that came from Burma.
I am merely a custodian of this wonderful bear as we have all been. Sometime soon Sidney will be bestowed to Scarlett my little niece the next in line as the oldest girl in our family. But for now he is still with me and lives in the most beautiful velvet lined button box, with all my other treasures. Buttons, old coins, shells, lucky stones and stories written by my sister.
Sidney bear connects me with my past and will collect stories for the future and share the magic.
Mr Clumsy
Mr Clumsy was a Christmas present from my Grandma when i was about 8 years old (16 years ago). He is a very cute fluffy white bear in red pajamas and a red santa hat with a pattern of teddy bears on. Although he has changed a bit over the years! Grandma has had to do a few repair jobs on the clothes, resulting in him now looking like a patchwork quilt and his hat now being a kind of beret on the back of his head (Grandma thought this would make him look more 'modern'!). He's also less fluffy and definitely less white. His nose is very squished because he used to sit in the top of my suitcase everytime I went on holiday. My twin sister was given a green version of him who we called Mrs Clumsy.....never knew what happened to her though! Maybe she was jealous of all the time he spent with me and went elsewhere.
I will never forget the time i accidentally put him in the wash with my bed sheets and only realised when i saw his sad face going round and round the washing machine. I sat there for the whole cycle waiting with panic that he might now survive it. Thankfully he did, in fact I think he needed it!
He still lives in my bed and I cuddle him every night as I'm going to sleep, although I do always feel a bit guilty when i hide him in my cupboard when my boyfriend comes to stay. I'll always say sorry and give him a kiss first though before making him comfy in my clothes!
Mr Pickle
Monsieur Pickle has no idea when he was born, and nor do I.
What we do know about this curious creature is that he was adopted by my Mother in Bangkok, Thailand in 2004. He was gifted to me that same Christmas. We assume he is an elephant since he has what seems to be a trunk and tiny tusks.
To be quite honest, I had no clue as to why my Mother thought of giving me a fuzzy brown elephant with limp limbs, I was 17 and felt “too grown up” to be owning a new stuffed animal.
I took him back home with me anyway. At the time I was in boarding school in the South of France, far from my family and in an unfamiliar country. Nor did I know that Monsieur Pickle was to become my most loyal companion.
What about his name? He chose it himself… I don’t even know if he has ever even tasted a pickle.
Monsieur Pickle is quite the avid traveller. Even though his experience has been mostly involved being stuffed into a bag for long periods of time and then suddenly being pulled out and dropped on a bed, or sometimes a tent, or sometimes not even coming out at all. He doesn’t mind being lugged around, as long as he’s on the road and by my side. He has been to Laos, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, the UK, Spain, France, the USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Guatemala.
For me, being far from home hasn’t always been easy, but having Monsieur Pickle with me is the most comforting thought in the world. He’s been with me through the highs and lows. He has taught me that silence is golden and we both keep to ourselves.
Having Monsieur Pickle never criticizes the way or dress or the silly things I tend to do. When I bite my nails, he never utters a word…
Over the years he has become more limp and scruffy, but he has never lost his charm.
Sometimes he disappears, god knows where he goes (are there other jointless fuzzy brown elephants out there?), but he always comes back.
Til’ this day, Monsieur pickle remains a magical character and my most loyal friend.
