House Sitting Can Be Such Fun

Just for a change, it's Blue Bear and Ungi here readers. While Gio, Pedro, George and Yorkie were away with our minders, walking the Camino, we had a very important job to do. We were looking after the house which includes our Bear Cave. As I, Blue Bear, am so big, our minders think I make a very good security guard and it is certainly true that I have a very deep growl, which I can make sound quite threatening, if I want to.

As well as looking after the house, we also did a bit of car sitting for a friend. The car we looked after, and still do from time to time, is a rather special car, especially for such a car enthusiast as me. It is a Austin Healey with a 'B' plate which makes it pretty old - 48 years in fact - many times old than me, and even older than Ungi!


As you can see it is a fantastic red model - what better colour can there be for a classic sports car? And on a nice day we can fold back the roof and go for a spin with the wind ruffling our fur.

As you might expect we turn quite a few heads when we go out in this car, affectionately known to us as 'Vroom'. We'd like to think this is because we cut such fine figures behind the wheel/windscreen, but it probably has as much to do with the fantastic throaty engine roar and the classic good looks of the car.


Being able to drive and look after this magnificent car was seventh heaven for me and I can honestly say I wasn't envious of the Camino walkers. I'd much rather have been behind the wheel of Vroom, which I was.

The current wintry weather and dark evenings means Vroom stays firmly tucked up in his owner's garage. I can't wait for the spring when I'll hopefully be allowed to take him out again. Before then we'll have to find Ungi a better booster seat as the wooden Rioja case he was sitting on to give him a good view, was apparently a bit uncomfortable!

Lots of love, Blue Bear and Ungi.

Happy Mothering Sunday

A very happy Mothering Sunday to all mothers everywhere, but especially to those associated with our extended family. Lots of virtual hugs and kisses to each of you.

We remembered our Mum today and did her proud with a card, flowers and chocolates (Maltesers, her favourite, no less) as you can see in our picture. She was very pleased with us all.


If you look closely, you will also see Bris and Gio with a delightful posy of flowers that they were about to hand over to our Mum. This posy came from one of our churches and was lovingly made, along with lots more, by one of our young 80+ year olds, who is an inspiration to us all. It had a lovely red and yellow tulip, some daffodil buds and some greenery.

We all enjoyed the Mothering Sunday service and, in the talk, we had fun playing true or false with some of the facts about mothers. Can you believe that it is true that one lady had 69 children! It was just a shame that families were not together in the pews this year. Hopefully they would have been meeting up later.

Lots of love, Ungi, Jimmy & all at Bears Unlimited xxx

What to Buy a Bear: Part 2

Hi, Ungi here, to tell you about one of my lovely Christmas presents. It was kindly given to me by my bear friends, to help me fulfil one of my long held ambitions, that is to play the guitar.

I'd already had my guitar as a previous Christmas present but, while the guitar was great, the 'how to play' guide that came with it, wasn't quite so good. I therefore needed something clear and simple that would get me up and playing. And, as you can see, I got it!


We think the 'Dummies' series of books are simply great and 'Guitar for Dummies' is no exception. I'm already playing a few chords and picking out the notes of Kumbaya for Bris and Gio to sing along to.

My friends, being the supportive bears they are, were worried that, by giving me this book, they were implicating that I was a 'dummy' and that I might be offended. Not so, I'm not a proud bear, and the only place to start is at the beginning and to take it one simple step at the time, the simpler the better.

Now I have this present, I'm certainly not worried about being kept indoors by all this cold weather, as it gives me plenty of opportunities to get practising.

Look out for my CD on Amazon soon!!

Lots of love, Ungi xxx

Bear Cave Make-over

We came back from our visit to the Midlands branch, to put the finishing touches to our make-over of our Norfolk bear cave.

Many paws have been working very hard at the transformation.


It tends to be a rather messy operation when bears arm themselves with a paint brush. The walls tend to fare rather better than us: they come out of the process looking immaculate, while, if we're not careful, we can end up with very strangely coloured fur. It therefore becomes necessary to search through our minders' rag bag and swathe ourselves in large t-shirts. It works a treat and we frequently give old t-shirts an inadvertent new lease of life in the process - something to do with retro 70's psychadelic styles.


It's always important to have an effective supervisor to ensure everything is properly co-ordinated and that we don't end up trying to implement too many contradictory ideas. On this occasion, Ungi did a great job for us, and we could tell he'd been watching lots of Property Ladder and Grand Designs type programmes.

We bet you can't wait to see the finished result. Rest assured it's really good. We'll show it to you next time.

Lots of love from the Norfolk branch xxx

Holby City Comes to North Norfolk

We had a great party and ate so much of Oakley's huge '250 posts' cake that we all fell asleep, and it was only when we woke up that we remembered that we hadn't taken any photos. By then the cake was gone, so sorry, you'll just have to imagine it.

Anyway, back to more serious matters. The eagle eyed amongst you, may have noticed that Ungi has changed his appearance slightly in our new Bears Unlimited Board photo. He recently had to have a fur transplant to deal with a rather serious hemorrhage of the stuffing variety.


We are fortunate, that as there are so many bears gathered in one place, many of whom are now middle aged now, we can justify hospital facilities at our Norfolk home.

We are also lucky that one of our minders is quite a skilled bear surgeon, probably because she's had so much practice. Much of the experience has been gained by dealing with repairs to Randolph who appears in the picture with Ungi, about to wake up after his latest surgery. Although still a mere youngster, Randolph has the misfortune to make more visits to the operating theatre than most. We think this is something to do with the fact that he wasn't made in England (but we don't want to say where he came from, as we don't want to be done for slander).

Fortunately, us bears and reindeers stand up to surgery well and recover a lot faster than our human counterparts. We don't even have to have a general anaesthetic either. The combination of a pint of Wherry, a glass of wine and a shot of the Polish cherry vodka we brought back from Poland, knocks us out nicely, just long enough for surgery to be completed.

We think Ungi looks incredibly distinguished with his new fur sideburn, but we haven't persuaded him to have the other side done yet. He says it will only be a matter of time.

Have any of our readers got any surgery tales they'd like to share with us?

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Happy New Year!

A Happy New Year to all our readers. We hope your New Year has got off to as good a start as ours.

We enjoyed an Indian meal, and saw in the New Year in Suffolk, with Suffolk branch members and today, we've been out on the River Deben in our open canoe with canoe club friends. Some of you may remember our 'up the creek with a paddle' post from last year when we did the same thing.

We're now safely back home and once again admiring all the Christmas cards we have been very lucky to receive.

We thought we'd share our favourite 2 with you.


We received this card from Fred's Mum who, as you will know, is one of our regular correspondents. We just love it, and we think it is an excellent advertisement for the value of having a bear (or two) in the family. After all, who would want a gift of gold when you could have bear instead? We also think this bear looks a lot like Ungi. Perhaps he has been too modest to tell us that he modelled for the picture.

We also smiled a lot when we opened this card.


It really appealed to our bear sense of humour.

If, like us, you're going back to work tomorrow, we hope you have a stress free day.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Norfolk Branch Report Back In

George & Yorkie are safely back from their latest adventure with a lot of new material for the Friendly Planet guide that they are eager to share with you. However, we, the less frequent travellers of the Norfolk Branch, have persuaded them to hang fire for a couple of days so we can update you on some of the things that we have been up to on home turf. As the end of George & Yorkie's posts about one holiday seems to coincide with the start of the next one, we thought that if we didn't make a concerted effort to get a few words in, there was a danger that you'd be reading about our summer activities in the middle of winter.

As we've enjoyed reading the Suffolk branch's tales of their French adventure so much, we also thought we'd like to give them the opportunity to tell us more, if there is more to tell.

Anyway, back to Norfolk, it has been a busy summer so far and we'd like to share some highlights.


Not long ago the garden was buzzing, literally, with activity. This was because the chain saw gang of Blue Bear and myself (Ungi) were in action. Now, we love trees and we wouldn't want any of our readers to think for a minute that we would cut down a tree without good reason. However, sometimes there comes a time when a tree (or three) have grown too big and sad though it is, they have to go.

In the photo above you see the before 'now you see it' shot. Monkey being a very agile tree climber was giving us a hand to get ropes tied on. Below, you have the 'now you don't' shot.


In total three trees had to come down and it was a whole day's work for a gang of us to chop up the trees into logs. We ended up with quite a large stack of wood as you can see in our next picture. Sadly, being fir, the wood wouldn't have been suitable for our wood burner for several years and as we couldn't store it that long, we had it taken away.


More news on the gardening front from Tommy, the chief gardening bear, is that the vegetable beds are doing well and we have had a particularly bumper crop of broad beans. This is good news as they are one of our favourite vegetables. Below you see Tommy handing over one of his pickings to Chef Bear Oakley. They decided they would pod the beans and freeze them so we could enjoy them over a long period.


As well as producing great vegetables Tommy also fills the garden with lovely flowers. We thought the following was a great example of what his green paws can achieve.


We'll be back soon with more news of our Norfolk summer.

Lots of love Ungi, Blue Bear, Tommy & the rest of the gang xxx

A Happy Re-union

While on our Derbyshire holiday, some of us took the opportunity to have a trip down memory lane. We took advantage of our proximity to Loughborough, to visit the town and university where we spent a pleasant 3 years in the mid 1980s, accompanying one of our minders who was a student at the university.

As it was so long ago, it was before the formation of Bears Unlimited, and many of the present members were not even born. I, Ungi, together with Dessie and Black Doggy were the ones at Loughborough. We thought we remembered it well, but when it came to finding one of the houses we lived in, we found it wasn't so easy.


When it comes to sniffing things out, a dog comes into his own, and Black Doggy confidently took up position on the wall of the student house we used to live in.

The major event, however, was our re-union with our old friend Ted, whose minder studied with our minder. Amazingly, Ted still lives in Loughborough. It was fantastic to see Ted again and in honour of the occasion we had our picture taken with me showing off my Loughborough University t-shirt.


Please bear with us for a moment while we indulge Fred's Mum of the Suffolk Branch with a picture of Chelmer meeting Barney the cat. Fred's Mum has heard all about Barney but not seen him!


As you can imagine we had loads and loads of news to catch up on. We'll tell you more in our next blog entry.

Lots of Love Ungi, Dessie and Black Doggy xxx

Beer, Bears and Song

After a day spent enjoying the great outdoors it is always pleasant to enjoy a cosy night in, and us bears like to make our own entertainment as much as we can. When you are away from home, as we were in our Derbyshire cottage, there are often new activities to try out.

Before we could properly relax, we had to master the old fashioned range in the kitchen. It gave us a taste of what life was like before all the labour saving devices we now take for granted. There was a role for each of us. I, George, kept the grate supplied with wood; Dessie and Black Doggy checked the hob was hot enough for our kettle and that the soot box wasn't too full; Chelmer and Rocco prepared the iron; Ungi was in charge of toast making and Yorkie, we're not sure about - he appears to be supervising.


After tea Ungi revealed previously hidden talents as a pianist. He has a great repertoire and ran us through some classics, some songs from the shows and finally some rousing drinking songs - yes we did have the beer to go with it, but Wherry sadly wasn't one of the local brews. We were a fair distance from home though.


Lots of love George, Ungi and co xxx

Bear on a bridge

Hello readers, it’s my turn to say ‘hello’ and to introduce myself. I’m Ungi – a bit of an unusual name I know, but it’s a corruption of Honey, the name I had when I was a very young bear. I’m now quite a venerable old bear and celebrated a big birthday earlier this year, can you guess which one? As you may be able to see from my bald patches and numerous operation scars, I’ve been well loved (and still am) and have lots of life experience.

In view of my age and experience I am one of the Directors of Bears Unlimited. In particular I oversee our property portfolio and am always on the look out for suitable residences for bears. I also help run a refuge for battered bears and a telephone help line for any bears in trouble.

My favourite holidays are canal boating holidays. Last year I travelled the Llangollen canal and found this perfect bear bridge where I had my photo taken. Hope you like it.