Pensioner's Paddington Bear to be Featured on the City Sightseeing Glasgow bus tour As A Glasgow Famous Landmark
3 NOV 2014 BY LYNN MCPHERSON
The Paddington Bear, which Nan Shearer made 33 years ago, will now be featured on the City Sightseeing Glasgow.bus tour after winning admirers from across the globe. He’s thrilled generations from the 1st floor window of his tenement flat and regularly receives postcards from fans all over the world. Now Nan Shearer’s battered Paddington Bear is to be featured on the bus tour as one of the city’s famous landmarks. The Scots-Peruvian bear’s popularity is set to explode with a new multi-million pound live action movie released this month.
But Nan, 76, admits that her homemade Paddington was initially displayed in the window of her home in the City’s Hyndland by mistake. She said, “It was May 1981. I had just moved in with my late husband, Leslie, and a friend’s daughter came to play. She left Paddington sitting in the window. We didn’t notice it until weeks later when we took it down. The next thing I knew, I was stopped in the street by the minister’s wife who said she had taken her grandson to see him and he wasn’t there. So he went back up.”
For the last 33 years, Postmen have delivered thousands of letters and cards, some simply addressed to “Paddington Bear,” above Peckham’s, Glasgow.
Other well wishers have left jars of marmalade outside Nan’s door. Someone even sent Paddington a wedding invitation. Nan had to decline but sent a tea towel with a marmalade recipe as a gift.
Paddington has become such a well-known sight that earlier this year, Nan was asked if he could be included in the City Sightseeing Glasgow bus tour. She said, “The route changed and the buses now pass my window. They asked if they could say a few words about Paddington. I agreed and I’ve even been on the tour twice.”
Nan, who swaps Paddington’s outfits to mark the changing seasons, says she especially loves getting cards and letters from young fans. She’s looking forward to seeing Michael Bond’s much-loved creation come to life on the big screen on November 28, 2014. Nan has already booked her ticket. She said, “I’m going with my niece and my great-niece. I can’t wait.”
Alex from California
05/08/2018
