Free 2008 - The Bearded Tit by Prefers to remain anonymous, Rory McGrath Page B

you only got those in supermarkets. Or in Aylesbury, if there was such a place. Oh yes, and Bombay duck, which I’d had once in an Indian restaurant and was never one hundred per cent sure of its provenance and was too scared to ask in case it turned out to be smoked baboon scrotum.
    ‘It’s beautiful.’ JJ loved the college gardens and the duck pond. It was all I could do to stop myself being proud of the place. And it was a delight to have her there, not least because my room was about forty-seven yards from the duck pond. If there was a sudden downpour, which would not be untypical of the time of year, I could legitimately invite her back.
    ‘Wow, you’ve got loads of different ducks! That’s a shelduck.’
    She was pointing at what I thought was a goose: a large white and orangey-brown bird with a black head and a bright red bill with what I now know is called a knob on the forehead. Three prettily marked birds, which she told me were a teal, a wigeon and a pochard, also seemed to excite JJ. Then I remembered something—I did know another type of duck after all.
    ‘We used to have a Jamaican whistling duck!’
    ‘Very exotic! What happened to it?’
    ‘Fox got it.’
    ‘Ah well, natural, I suppose.’
    I hadn’t the heart to tell her that the demise of the Jamaican whistling duck was not as natural as she supposed. The duck had been a gift to the college from an ex-fellow who had gone on to make billions in the pharmaceutical industry. (Drug dealing, of course, was the de rigueur rumour we undergraduates circulated.) As a token of gratitude, this multi-millionaire alumnus had decided to reward the college with a duck. There was a low-key ceremony when the bizarre creature was released from its pen and made some unpleasant high-pitched hissing sounds and a few of the fellows applauded and the dean made a speech of thanks about how we would enjoy the bird and remember our benefactor fondly. That very night the bird was, I believe, enjoyed by a few of the undergraduates after it had been ‘bagged’ by the captain of the rowing club, who, for the record, was called Julian Fox.
    The previous spring, the college catering manager had come in for some rough treatment courtesy of the Emmanuel ducks. It was that time of year when the gardens were overrun with duckling. In this ‘protected’ environment all the ducks bred well. Our catering manager was called Steve Chilton, an obsequious but two-faced toerag. This was Kramer’s description of him. ‘It’s true,’ he maintained. ‘That’s what it says on his CV.’ But he did try to improve the standard and variety of college meals. One night in hall he was proud to offer the undergraduates a couple of roast quail each. Luxury. But someone had Tippexed out ‘roast quails’ from the menu sheets and substituted ‘Emmanuel’s own baby ducklings’. There was a riot when the animal-rights society found out. The hall was invaded, meals were thrown, plates smashed; Rex the Chaplain’s sherry was knocked over and he fainted as a result.
    ‘And a tufted duck,’ exclaimed JJ. ‘They’re fantastic.’ Now tufted ducks certainly are value for money. They’re like playing-in-the-bath-ducks but black and white with a bright yellow eye and a long, wispy tuft or crest hanging down the back of their head. They are ‘diving ducks’ and disappear underwater for ages and then reappear somewhere completely different. You can spend many a pleasurable hour watching this duck. Well, you can if you’re supposed to be doing something else like working or studying; or if you’re not in bed with the girl of your dreams. So, yes, I have spent a great deal of time watching the tufted duck.
    But there is a drawback to having a duck pond in a college. Put mathematically: duck pond plus student plus alcohol equals student being slung into duck pond late at night in underpants.
    But this was Cambridge University so obviously it was a bit more sophisticated than that. The college