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 7th or 9th 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’.
