(With deepest thanks to @JuliaRuthSmith1 for the doll's head treature and @AdamCSharp for giving his blessing to use his recent list of idioms relating to bears - clearly a man of impeccable taste)
In Dutch an ongelikte beer (an unlicked bear) is a boor or a rude person. This is not, as Jude believed, because the Dutch have a habit of licking bears. It comes from the medieval belief that bears are born formless and need to be licked into shape by their mothers. If you meet a rude Dutchmen, be kind, he's probably been neglected by his mother as he's not been licked into shape unlike the bears. Stories also need to be licked into shape. Which is ok because....
We open for submissions on the 15th June. One month away
Now for Capn Dave to become der Erklärbär (Germans trust bears to explain the rules, for some reason):
We'd love you to write up to 1000 words for our first, themed submission What Scares You - those really specific, weird things that don't scare other people but give you the hnnfff. You know the hnnfff, right? That jingle-jangle down your spine, the liquid legs, the squeems, the dry mouth. So no vampires or ghosts or axe murderers (unless they have weird fears, obviously. An axe murderer who's afraid of bleach, how's she going to clean up her crime scenes... a vampire afraid of teeth or veins, how would that work? You get a sense of what a bear's best Halloween treat might look like. Tricky. Neither fish nor foul...or maybe a lil' bit foul. )
Jude's worst fears are zelatiniphobia (fear of jelly) and sciurophobia (fear of squirrels - a fear she shares with Tim Burton, and she isn't sure if that makes her feel more or less normal about it). Jac has molluscophobia (specifically the naked kind; slugs). We aren't even Jemandem den Bären aufbinden (tying a bear on someone - a German phrase for pulling their leg).
The good news is the themed submission will be open until 30th September. Plenty of time to lick it into shape and 'Save Dave' with a story for our first edition, which will go out in October.
Other sayings about bears
For the full list of bear idioms you can see Adam Sharp's Twitter post (and if you love words and wit, you should probably just follow him) but Dave's faves are:
A colloquial Estonian expression for telling someone to hurry up or you’ll leave without them is situ ruttu, karu tuleb. It means “shit faster, the bear is coming” (Dave doesn't want to interupt, and in case you're wondering, he's got a composting toilet on board his boat, so he doesn't go in the woods)
A Finnish way of saying that life is hard or unfair is aina ei mene nallekarkit tasan. It means “the gummy bears are not always evenly divided” (Ain't that the truth)
A Slovene exclamation of surprise (similar to “holy shit” or “OMG”) is tristo kosmatih medvedov! It means “three-hundred hairy bears!” (we want to adopt this saying).
It was believed in medieval times that the claws from a bear's left paw drive away demons. Must be true because Capn Dave has a full set of them and he's never been possessed by demons...or has he?
Bear With Us!
If you want to stay up to date with all the bear essentials, sign up for our newsletter. extra content, bear faced cheek, more details on our themed submissions and then the bear-saving stories that keep the Gander Brother's off my bear behind straight to your inbox...can't ask for more, surely. And if that isn't enough, follow us on Twitter @CapndaveNFNF (it took me years to learn how to write words with these paws, I'm not marking the page with an X, even for a billionaire and his new toy).
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