Duck Season (5/6/13)

Of all the things that we've ever lost, the one I miss most is Flat Duck.

I'll elucidate. There are things that disappear, that get left behind in time, that somehow go astray; things that you know for a fact that you had one day and the next day they'd gone. Then there are the things that you can pin down to the exact moment, the exact place, that you lost them. It doesn't make them any less lost. Flat Duck falls into the latter category.

I've a history of losing things. I can remember vividly the first comic that I ever bought. I was five or six, we were going to Speke Airport, the old one opposite where I now work, with Nan and Grandad. Not to go anywhere, for a day out, watching the planes and I bought a Spider-Man comic in the shop at the corner of the street next to my Nan's road (Dryden Street, Bootle). Spider-Man had a cold, he fought the Vulture, I was hooked. I treasured that comic and the one where Batman solved a murder that was committed by somebody pushing a pin through the fleshy bit at the back of the ear and into the victims brain - terrified me for years that one. Treasured both those comics, no idea what happened to them, lost in the move from Bootle to Fazakerley.

Lost like the horror comics that I read in the caravan that we went to in Towyn in the 70s. I had them, then I didn't.

Lost like the box of cassettes that should realistically be somewhere in the loft. It's okay, it's only every single recording I have of my gigging days. Reason dictates that it was in the loft, I didn't take it from the loft, it must still be in the loft. It isn't.

More worryingly there's Tom's first baby photo. I had the passport sized version in my wallet for about fifteen years, along with Matty's first baby photo, a couple of photo booth pictures of J and Tom when Tom was about a year old and a the photo portion of the 'zone ticket' that J was using on Merseytravel when we first met. It was there and then one day it wasn't. Possibly slipped out when I was paying for my lunch in Boots one day. There are other copies but that was my copy and it's gone.

Then there was flat duck.

He wasn't really called flat duck, the name he was sold under was square duck but we called him flat duck because he was, well, flat; flat and square and soft and yellow and looked like a duck and he belonged to Matty when he was nine months old. He hadn't had him long when we went to Rhodes. We took a nine month old to Rhodes. Major tactical mistake. For ten days he didn't eat, he didn't drink, he didn't sleep, I spent every night pushing him in his buggy along the seafront until he nodded off and every day carrying him round the grounds of the hotel so that he could touch the trees because that was what he liked doing.

(This was also the holiday where ex-Liverpool player Jimmy Case saved Tom from drowning. I haven't told you that one yet? We'll get there)

Anyway, there were these toy shops. And Tom, being nearly 5, loved these toy shops. There is nowhere quite like the Greek Islands for 'blag' toys; Power Rangers that aren't really Power Rangers, Action Men that aren't, Batman and Spider-Man figures that fail to convince, Hulk Transformers that are neither Hulk nor Transformer. And Digimon. God, Tom loved Digimon (in fairness, they're a damn sight better than Pokemon)

So we were on the 'buying a toy every night' phase and one night we went shopping and we had everything with us; bottle cooling bag, nappy bag, toys in the undercarriage of the buggy. And one of the toys was flat duck. And we went in shops and out of shops and by the middle of the night flat duck wasn't there any longer.

Matty wasn't bothered. I was bereft. It was like losing a family pet. A small, square, flat family pet but a family pet nevertheless.

I think about flat duck far more often than is reasonable for a grown adult.

I hope he found a good home.