Golden Duck

We had a good weekend, or part of one, at the Aldeburgh Literary Festival. Would have been even better from my point of view if I hadn't had a gammy leg which sent me whimpering back to Essex on Saturday night. So I had the pleasure of watching Francis play Marx to Tristan Hunt's Engels on Saturday (AND Sandy Toksvig / John McCarthy on Friday evening - they do you well in Aldeburgh) but missed all the treats on Sunday.

Our friend Silas Brown was working on John and Mary James's bookstall for the entire weekend and was therefore in a position to dish out star ratings. On Sunday he returned at lunchtime ecstatic about Jenny Uglow's session on Charles II 'Jenny Uglow kicks ass!' is what he is reliably reported to have said. In the afternoon, however, he (sweet boy)decided that the Golden Cockle should go to Francis for his Strange Days speech. What, I wondered, could be even more laudatory that 'kicks ass'? I thought of our own children and their rich vocabulary. If they had genuinely agreed with Silas's high rating I think they would have said that Francis's session was 'really sick'.