Big duck...

No, it isn’t a trick photograph or photoshop, it really is a huge rubber duck floating on the water.

Now I know that my interest in rubber ducks isn’t to everyone’s liking, a few of you have even said ‘I just don’t get it’ – well, I can’t make you ‘get it’ but I think that you would agree that this 10 x 11 x 13 meter, pontoon based, inflatable rubber duck by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman is probably the rubber duck statement to end them all, and so much grander than any of my feeble meanderings into the rubber duck world. So far this Duck has landed in Japan, Holland and South America but has yet to come to the UK.

Hofman says – ‘The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn't discriminate people and doesn't have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!’

And you know what? I agree with him! There is nothing negative about rubber ducks, rubber ducks are a totally positive experience and that is more than can be said of most things. I understand why Hofman believes that rubber ducks have healing properties, well anything that makes you smile has to have at least some health giving energy, and rubber ducks can even save your life; Shirley Madsen, a ninety year old American woman, survived three days trapped in her bathtub by drinking water from a rubber duck.

So in answer to those of you that ‘don’t get it’… try looking at these pictures without smiling, and don’t worry about what it all means, see it for what it is… a humongous rubber duck floating on the water, nothing more, just a very big rubber duck… feeling better?

I bet you can already feel those mondial tensions just draining away.