Diary – 23 August 2003

Naked ambition is harder to disguise in the country. Take the duck race at a neighbouring village f’te. A hundred yellow plastic ducks went whizzing along a turbulent stream. My grandson Phineas’s duck was number 94, a prankster who liked to swim bottom up, head under water. We supporters cheered from the bank, lamenting as our duck tangled with a willow branch, rejoicing as he sped on a discovered current. A surprisingly gentle country pursuit, you might think, until I spotted number 94 had joined the leaders. ‘Go for it, 94! Squeeze them out, 94! Bash them with your beak! Scuttle the wimps!’ Now he was up to third, then second, one bridge to go, a foot or two of shallow and he could win! ‘You’re the champion!’ Shaking with tension and triumph, I turned to my grandson’s round, wondering eyes, to my house-guests’ quizzical expressions. ‘You realise,’ said Trevor, ‘he was in the second wave of arrivals, which makes him 16th….’