Halfway

 

Halfway up the stairs

There is a bedtime ritual in our house. Herschel usually grabs his bed space an hour or so before the humans then Janice and Gilbert go up and make their preparations.

 Some time later, Barry stokes up the fire, checks the doors and windows, makes sure the fridge and freezer locks are engaged, to foil the ever hungry and resourceful Jellicoe, and tells Roxy it’s time for bed. She trots ahead and goes partway up the stairs, then sits and waits for him. She usually stops on the 7^th or 9^th step. Then they have a conversation about the day, talking about the things that have happened and what might happen on the morrow. There may be biscuits involved.

Sometimes, Gilbert decides to go and find out what’s holding everyone up (especially if biscuits are involved!)

The photograph of Roxy and Gilbert brought to mind the little poem by A.A. Milne, though the child in the verse, Christopher Robin, is halfway down the stairs to begin with, and then halfway up.

Halfway down the stairs

Is a stair

Where I sit.

There isn’t any

Other stair

Quite like

It.

I’m not at the bottom,

I’m not at the top;

So this is the stair

Where

I always

Stop.

 

Halfway up the stairs

Isn’t up

And isn’t down.

It isn’t in the nursery,

It isn’t in the town.

And all sorts of funny thoughts

Run round my head;

“It isn’t really

Anywhere!

It’s somewhere else

Instead!”

The poem was included in the collection of poems in ‘When We Were Very Young’, with illustrations by the inimitable Ernest Shepard. Harold Fraser-Simson, a composer of light music, and best remembered for his musical, ‘The Maid of the Mountains’, set many of A.A. Milne’s poems to music, including ‘Halfway Down’.

It is a very sweet song and became well-known after it was used in ‘The Muppet Show’. In the first season, Robin the Frog, Kermit’s nephew, sat and sang it on a flight of stairs. It was one of Jim Henson’s favourite Muppet songs and was sung at his memorial service.

The song also featured in an episode of ‘Family Guy’.