Grin and Bear it. Once more with Feeling

Huttonian vowed not to blog(again) about Voytek the Drinking, Smoking, Fighting, ASBO-worthy Polish Bear but a letter in the Berwickshire strikes a chord:


SIR, - May I disagree with the places to put the statues of Voytek the Bear.
There was no Polish connections with Paxton House. They employed Italian prisoner of war labour.
Visitors have to pay to go to Paxton House and it is closed from October to Easter. As Duns has a Polish war memorial and Duns is twinned with Zagen in Poland more people would be visiting Duns.
Voytek ended his days at the zoo in Edinburgh. Many children saw him then and would remember him today. The statue would be more at home there than at the Parliament. How many politicians remember him?
Hutton (not Paxton) was the centre for the Polish soldiers. Two of them found wives and lived there.
ONE WHO REMEMBERS,
Name and address withheld on request

Someone should show this letter to Mrs O

So no statue in Paxton then?

Nor in the Eildon Hills either, as yet-see image taken from Harden's Hill looking south west. Click on it to see Trimontium- one more possible site for a statue to Voytek as suggested by nobody. Frankly I could not be bothered to put up another picture of the disagreable and dead animal

Labels: Hutton, Mrs O, Paxton, Voytek

  ¶ 8:51 AM