Gates Of The West

Two sunsets in as many days; I'm getting slightly addicted to shooting around dusk. At the moment, sundown's coinciding nicely with me finishing work, hence the compulsion to make the most of what little daylight's left.

And boy, I've earned it today. It's Red Nose Day, so many a charitable challenge has been set for the punters, including a competition conceived by Nicol in which a specific number of rubber ducks (namely, thirty-six) were placed behind the bar, and people encouraged to guess the number of ducks in order to win a prize.

All well and good, except for the fact that there's not a massive amount of space behind the bar for the concealment of ducks, rubber or otherwise. After placing about nine of them, Nicol ran out of ideas, at which point she stumbled on the solution of tying string around the necks of a dozen and hanging them from the ceiling.

I'm not sure if you can possibly imagine how gruesome it looks to see a novelty duck hanging by its neck from the rafters. If you're having difficulty, this picture may help, although it still doesn't really do justice to the sight of twelve of them dangling from their miniature nooses. Nor is the scene helped by me trying to work in the shadow of this grisly bathtime massacre. As the only person on-shift after Nicol departed at one o'clock, it naturally appeared to anyone wandering onto the premises that I spend my working hours lynching small toys for the fun of it.

Nor did the hilarity end there. The cheap Sellotape-substitute she'd used to hold the strings to the ceiling lost its adhesive properties after an hour or two, so in addition to their opening impressions of me as a deranged duck-murdering maniac, as the afternoon progressed customers were treated to the sight of the ducks raining down on my head at periodic intervals.

Aside from these minor issues, much fun was had by all, and someone even managed to guess the correct number of ducks. They've been promised an unspecified but apparently "really cool" prize. I have the funny feeling it may turn out to be thirty-six rubber ducks, some with slight rope burn.