Chapter 3 - Paper Tigers and People's Kangaroos
In which a bear of very little brain discovers that one family, one child really is best

"The sun is up early today", thought Pooh to himself, as the world turned slowly around him in his bedroom in One Hundred Acre Wood. “But oh, my head hurts this morning -- and my mouth feels all furry."

Pooh tried to remember what he had been up to the day before. Looking around his room, he started to piece the various parts of it together, in the manner of Christopher Robin’s favourite Jigsaw puzzle on which they would co-operate from time to time.

The evening had begun well enough, he recalled, when he went to visit his friend Kanga for tea. Then Owl had brought out a pot of honey -- only it turned out that it wasn’t honey, but something else entirely.

"I saw a recipe for this and thought of you, Comrade Pooh”, said Owl. "It's a thing you do to honey that turns it into 'Me-Add'."

"Me-Add?", asked Pooh, quizzically.

"Yes", said Owl, authoritatively. "You have to Add You to it, and then it tastes really much better than ordinary honey."

"Oh", said Pooh, sceptically. But it turned out that Owl was right. By putting extra ingredients into the honey, and leaving it for a little while, the honey did seem to taste much better, and quite a lot more interesting.

But Pooh couldn't remember much more than that, and now it was the following morning.

On the way to the bathroom, with the sun straight into his eyes, Pooh tripped over something.

"Oof!", said the Thing That He Had Tripped Over.

"Ow!", said Pooh.

"Pooh, be careful!" said the Thing That He Had Tripped Over, in a voice that sounded very much like Kanga's.

"Oh, hello Kanga”, said Pooh, rubbing his head and feeling a little queasy. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here?", said Kanga, surprised. "This is my house!"

"Oh," said Pooh, a little confused. "What am I doing here then?"

"Pooh, are you saying that you don't remember anything about last night?"

"Um, no I don't think so."

"Nothing?"

"Um...”

"Do you remember what you promised about me joining the Central Committee?"

"What’s a Central Committee?"

"Do you remember, that after Owl left...", Kanga began to explain, but at that moment, who should come through the door quite fast but Roo!

"Hallo, Pooh!", said Roo, scampering up to Pooh. "Let's go out and play!"

"Um, perhaps just a little later," said Pooh. "After breakfast."

"Oh dear”, said Kanga. "Pooh, it's time for lunch. You've been sleeping all morning."

"Lunch, then," said Pooh. "Won't you join us, Roo, for some luncheon?"

And so together they had a sumptuous banquet of acorns, milk, honey and, in Pooh’s case, several large glasses of water.

Roo talked for most of the time about the fine games he was learning, and the new hoeing techniques that were going to make One Hundred Acre Wood the envy of the whole world — remarks which sometimes drew disapproving glances from Kanga, which Pooh pretended not to notice.

After dessert, Pooh decided that it was time to go home. After hugging Kanga in a comradely way, he trotted through the woods with a spring in his step, and began to sing a new hum to himself:

"Sing ho for the Fourteen Great Achievements!
Sing ho for capitalists beguiled!
Sing ho for the victories of the Chinese Peasantry!
Made possible by parents raising a single Child!"

And so it was that Pooh realised that a “one parent one child” policy allows the resources of the people to be channelled away from bourgeois familiy fecundity and towards the building of genuinely communist solidarities between comrades.

Next Month: Chapter 4: "Why Trees Are Better Than Flowers in the Courtyard"