Rubber duck duck...

For those of you that have been reading my blog for a while you probably know that I like rubber ducks. Well, when I say like it’s more of a compulsion – they make me smile you see, but then who can look at a rubber duck without smiling? There have been times when I’ve been unable to pass a rubber duck without purchasing it and consequently I have quite a collection – a hundred or so, maybe more. Batman, Dracula, ducks in bikinis, diver ducks, burglar ducks, sailor ducks, flashing ducks, glow in the dark ducks, classic yellow, pink, polka dot, paisley - I suppose you could say I’m a sucker for a ducker, so feel free to say it even though you know that you shouldn’t because it’s a really silly thing to say.

I guess it all began at bath time back in the kitchen of my Grandmother’s house on Wellington Street. The small tin bath filled with boiled water from the kettle, a roaring fire, a rag rug ready to sit on as I was roughly dried with the hard old towels - and of course a Woolworths rubber duck to play with as I was scrubbed and soaped with Johnson’s coal tar soap. Saturday night was always bath night back then, rubber duck night I called it.

Later I’d try to hook a rubber duck as it floated past at Thame fair each September time, my dad balancing me on the edge of the stall so that I could reach out with my bamboo cane and hook a duck. It was exciting being out in the dark night, the flashing lights and the smell of candyfloss and toffee apples. “Got one!” I’d shout - the stallholder turning it over; ‘win’ he’d mumble with a scowl, passing me a goldfish in a polythene bag filled with water, a tight blue drawstring to use as a carrying handle. I dropped one once, the fish flapping and flipping in the gutter. To be honest I’d rather have kept the duck.

A world away now but I still like rubber ducks.

Well, it’s September again and last weekend on Thame Bridge, scene of many a fine adventure, thousands of rubber ducks were sent tumbling into the river (which is also imaginatively named Thame) in a rubber duck race. I wasn’t there but my cousin, Lindsey, posted this picture of the great release; just look at them splash into the water. They had better be careful though, that river is full of pike and one of them is almost four feet long. I know; I glimpsed it one summer’s afternoon hiding out in the shadow under the bridge by the reeds waiting for a passing duckling.

All those rubber ducks set free to wander where they will, maybe to bob and meander their way to the sea, across the busy channel, on to America, maybe even Australia.

I wonder where they will all end up? Lost for years in a bed of tall green reeds or maybe part of the detritus of a swan’s raft nest, some might even waterlog and - floating down to the bottom of the riverbed - become part of a silent underwater ducky tableau. Maybe some will even find themselves in a fairground swimming around and around forever as small boys poke sticks at them or in a silver-grey tin bath in front of the fire in my Grandmother’’s kitchen. Rubber ducks are like that, they pop up when you least expect them, in baths, in streams, far out at sea, in puddles on rainy days, in my mind. They make me smile; their job is to make us all smile. Keep your eyes open.