Friday, September 14, 2012

Sending them back in the same old way.

Ducks on their way to a date with destiny 

Some of you may recall that I had a clear out of the War Room some time ago and offered a Roman Villa free to a good home. There were several interested parties, but I decided that the prize should go to the fastest gun. Unfortunately, I forgot to specify whether this was the fastest gun to leave a comment on my blog or the fastest gun to leave a comment on TMP. The result was that I had two parties both of whom were morally equally entitled to consider themselves the victor.

They were Rosbif and James.

Here at Joy and Forgetfulness, we respect tradition. We value continuity and stability. So it was important that this difficult question be settled in a manner fitting the solemnity of the occasion. Consequently, I decided that we would settle this matter as our forefathers would have done.

By shooting a NERF gun at rubber ducks.

 A NERF gun - an elegant weapon for a more civilized age

You will observe the NERF gun before me, it carries six foam darts. The ducks which are sitting on the arm of my favourite chair have been marked underneath with stickers. Mrs Kinch kindly added a sticker to the base of each duck bearing the letters "US" or "OZ". She did this without my knowledge so that I could open fire safe in the knowledge that I was entirely ignorant of which ducks were Aussies and which were Yankees.
 The first casualties fall

The idea being that the last duck standing would take the prize for his home country. You'll have to forgive me for the poor quality of these shots, but they were snapped on my Iphone camera after I returned from a dinner party. Mrs Kinch and I has spent a very pleasent evening with some good friends, though I dined rather well. Consquently I was not quite as handy with either gun or camera as I might normally be.


 A Cowboy duck - marked US unsurprisingly 



 The final round clips the toy soldier duck and knocks him off the arm of the chair 

I called a halt at this moment, firstly because though toy soldier duck remained standing, he had been hit and Bigglesworth duck had not. Secondly, I had fired all six shots and I would have had to go upstairs to get more ammunition.

Bigglesworth duck - marked US

The flash has really blown out the white of the label here - but the label is marked US rather than OZ, so the villa will be heading to the United States rather than the antipodes.

No ducks were harmed in the writing of this blog.

7 comments:

  1. I bow to your impartial decision!

    I must say I was on the edge of my seat reading this. You do a good line in suspense Mr Kinch!

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    1. It was a grueling experience for both of us, I assure you. The ducks are still in therapy.

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  2. I'm from an earlier age, sir. We did not use nerf guns for situations like this. Oh, no. We used Ping Pong Ball guns . . . and boy were they fun!

    Still it seems to me that you performed admirably in your choice of finding an equitable way of making your decision.


    -- Jeff

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  3. What a fun idea, maybe next time get the contestents themselves to stand in your living room? Would save on postage!

    Ian

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    1. Fantastic - though it would leave the ducks somewhat underemployed.

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  4. Wow - it was just like the Olympics. I was shouting USA!, USA! as I was reading through your post and was in constant fear that the East German judge would throw the whole thing to the Aussies.

    Nice column in Battlegames about miniature pricing - I agree with your position.

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