World-weary sophisticates of 14 or so are quite capable of coming over all soppy at the sound of the Old Bear signature tune. ~ Daily Mail, August 1995

I just found this and have been listening over and over again, which is generally what I do with music. I’m a bit rubbish: I get obsessed with certain pieces and play them continuously and then get bored of them and hence don’t seem as good, so really what I should do is not play the same thing so much. Still, this theme tune is particularly good. It brings back many memories of enjoying the Old Bear TV show and the books, with their characters and tales. It gives me a feeling of goodness and contentment, as though little else matters beyond Old Bear’s stories. That happy little world in which they lived was so simple and fulfilled, and I lived in it too.

In this country, raised by ‘good’ parents who are able to provide, most people have very fond childhood memories such as those evoked by this theme tune. And yet very few would choose to go back to those days if they could, to live a life entirely constituted of them. Why is this? Is it because we accept that we grow towards extremes of both responsibility and fulfilment as we grow up - by this I mean we gain new and exciting things to do that surpass the likes of Old Bear but we also gain responsibilities for things we would rather not do and didn’t have to do as a young child.

A more philosophical look at this might be to argue that no stage of life is ideal and they all have different things to learn from them. But then we die and it all comes to so very little. For now then I’ll just enjoy this theme tune.