ch3.org.uk

OR:
A Vile Canard
OR:
A Comedy of Errors
OR:
Two Double Bacardi And Cokes, Please
OR:
What The Hell Made You Think That Would Work Anyway?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5218396.stm

The Duck Race was a farce of truly British proportions; I've not the strength to give you the full de tails of de ducks, but suffice to say it was, in the words of the announcer, "A bit of a disaster". And that was the bit I missed.

No attempt was made to place the duck-containing booms (having 20000 rubber ducks escaping into the wild Not Being An Option) before the tide turned at 1:30; probably logical, but some previous testing would not have gone amiss. They layed the booms. They tangled and sunk. They disentangled them, relayed them, and they sunk again. One floated away down the river. They unrolled a new one, layed that, and it burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp Thames. They layed a shorter course; it sank. During all of this, they said "it'll be 10-15 minutes" every 10-15 minutes for 1.5 hours. Then they said "We'll do it at Four". So we buggered off for tea, moderately sure it'd now never happen. While were away, it happened; 20000 ducks slid out of a skip (taking, I'm told, 5-10 minutes to achieve this step) and immediately escaped the booms; they're probably somewhere around the Wetlands Centre by now.

Somehow they managed to call some winners; I suspect they just made the numbers up.

I managed not to see, or take a picture of, a single rubber duck. However I did get a bunch of pictures of people which are here.

And yet, I rather enjoyed it all ;)