As the ink begins to dry on my first
novel, 'Broken Eggshells,' a chilling thought hits me -
Christian who? Broken what?
I need some publicity. If I was a celebrity then I could
churn out a ghost-written masterpiece without ever needing
to write a single word (or even read it, if some of the
industry rumours are to be trusted.)
But I'm not a celebrity, and despite
the confidence I have in the official Broken Eggshells website,
I am under no illusion - being a completely unknown author,
no-one would even consider a second look at me unless I
somehow caught their attention first.
Flyers are too expensive and you have
to print off a whole forest's worth before you can even
get 5 people to consider blowing their nose on them. Radio,
TV and the newspapers are well worth a look but getting
your foot in the door can involve a lot of tireless work
with no reward. But with the Internet just a mouseclick
away, a soothing thought envelops me, if a bunch of animated
hamsters can land a record deal then surely I can get some
publicity for my book.
The more absurd the better and fortunately,
I didn't have to dig too deep into my head to unearth a
vast vat of absurdity just waiting to spill into reality.
When I got married in August 1999, I had done away with
the guestbook and employed the services of 100 plastic ducks.
When you think about it, it's logical - guestbooks can easily
get lost, only one person can sign them at a time, and the
blank white pages don't inspire anyone to write anything
overly different. 100 plastic ducks with tags around their
necks sort out all three issues in one 'fowl' swoop.
Thinking back to how people reacted to the sea of yellow
plastic at the wedding reception, I quickly realised that
an object placed out of context coupled with human curiosity
was a sure-fire way of securing peoples attention. The
less information available, the more the curiosity increases.
'I found a duck' was born. 500 plastic
ducks, all left in London. All that would be on them was
a unique ID number and the address www.ifoundaduck.com.
The idea being that when people found them, they would log
their find on the website and then leave the duck elsewhere
for someone else to discover. 500 plastic ducks, 1 world,
infinite possibilities.
Click, click, click... crunch. The third Dymo coloured
tape embossing machine gives up the ghost. I open up the
packaging of the fourth and insert some fresh coloured
tape. For a number of months now, my flat has been overrun
with plastic ducks and coloured tags. I have blisters from
continually hand-punching the coloured tags on the Dymo
(though I must confess my wife, Hayley, did most of this
- the tags, not the blisters). There is a litter of discarded
plastic ribbons that represent my various spelling mistakes
- wwww.ifoundaduck.com, www.ifoundadud.com etc.
I do not want to see another plastic duck ever again...
this is not the best frame of mind to find yourself in
when you happen to have 500 of them sharing your living
space.
At last, I was ready to evict the yellow
army of squatters that had plagued my life for the previous
5 months. I began to plan the press releases. I decided
to make mention of the futile terrorists from the plot of
the book: Broken Eggshells is about a group of cynics who
are so fed up with how futile the world has become they
decide to payback society in a series of the most bizarre
and pointless terrorist attacks ever. They plant large amounts
of explosives in the middle of the Sahara, Siberia etc.
So having sent out dozens of press releases to, among
other places, the BBC, about the plan to plant yellow plastic
ducks in London in the name of a novel of futile terrorism,
I returned to my flat, relaxed, and loaded up the BBC news
homepage.
Bomb rocks BBC.
Damn.
Here I am, having just sent a press
release to the BBC about quirky terrorists, threatening
to leave 500 'ducks' around London, just in time for the
front of the BBC's Broadcasting House to be blown to smithereens.
In seven days time I am planning to
leave 500 plastic ducks in our nation's capital whilst the
police on the news continually preach the message- 'If you
see anything strange on the floor, do not go near it, call
the police.'
I go to work as usual on Monday, half
expecting a call on my mobile from Scotland Yard. By lunchtime,
I have convinced myself that I am the most wanted terrorist
in the UK. I am known merely as 'The Duck Man' and I run
the most ruthless terrorist cell on the mainland. I imagine
myself leaving a coded warning: 'This is the first time
we have contacted you. We did the plastic ducks, you will
hear from us again.'
Perhaps a phone call would be a good idea. Best call them
before they call me. I phone the Counter Terrorist Branch
and explain the situation.
'I guess now isn't a good time for me to leave 500 plastic
ducks all around London.'
'No, now is not a good time. We have people phoning us up
even if they find a burger carton in the street.'
'So when would be a good time to leave to leave 500 plastic
ducks in London?'
'That's a good question.'
'How about if I gave you a map of the route we'd take and
gave you photos of all the people helping out. Would that
be acceptable then?'
'I can't say a yes or no to that. At the end of the day,
it's entirely up to you whether you go ahead with this.
But personally, I think that if you do go ahead, you will
cause chaos.'
'Oh.'
With that vote of confidence, I decided
to postpone until Easter Saturday. The postponement itself
spawns two articles, in 'The Big Issue' and 'Timeout,' and
so traffic to the website starts to build. With the appearance
of so many Easter chicks in the shops, an extra 500 plastic
ducks should blend in quite nicely. Easter Saturday being
the anniversary of the Easter uprising was a concern, especially
as the IRA seem to be a stickler for dates, but the date
was set. Saturday 14th April was D-Day.
The day arrived and seven of us set out to flood London
with yellow plastic. Myself, Hayley (she of aforementioned
non-blister fame), Adam (my brother), and Nick (responsible
for that insane foot-tapping duck jingle on the website)
will all be working on placing the ducks down as subtly
as possible. The other three are all present as impartial
observers - Neil and Steve handling the photography for
the day and Mark is present in order to film a documentary
about the scheme.
Adam has obviously had his haircut
especially for the occasion and looks as if he has said "make me look
like a terrorist" to the hairdresser responsible.
Even the impartial cameraman has a black dockers hat that
gives him that 'keep a close eye on me, I might well kill
someone if I get bored' look.
London was on high security alert, we soon noticed a Police
van circling around us for about half an hour. It eventually
departed once we had proved to be harmless. We had plastic
ducks, not plastic explosives. We soon split up, myself
and Hayley head off across the middle of Hyde park, taking
note of the mounted Police watching nearby.
Halfway through the Park, I notice a large empty fountain
that is just screaming out for a duck to be sat on top
of it. I check the scene and the coast is clear. As I am
about to place the plastic quacker in pride of place, I
am suddenly jumped upon by a gang of joggers. There are
four of them, all in white with matching caps and they
seem to be jogging even when stationary. I very quickly
notice that they have 2 ducks in their possession already
and are looking hungry for more.
"What are all these ducks about?" They have
obviously spotted the aforementioned quacker in hand and
can see into the huge bag of ducks at my side. Throwing
logic to the wind I thrust all mitigating evidence behind
my back and say "What ducks?" (it always seems
to work for Bugs Bunny.)
Ignoring my obvious innocence,
they dance around me, Red Indian style, chanting "we've
found the duck man, we've found the duck man."
They hold up their own ducks like bait, attempting to
entice their plastic siblings from behind me. I am rapidly
realising that they obviously think it's some cash draw
where you have to find that one lucky duck, they were probably
looking to grab as many ducks as possible to increase their
chances of getting rich. I calmly tell them to visit the
website where they will be given full instructions.
With no other information available they default back
to jogging mode and bound off towards the middle of Hyde
Park. I place the duck on the fountain and walk away, only
to turn and see the keep-fit herd rapidly moving in on
the freshly laid bait. Fortunately they are joggers through
and through and thus have no running capabilities at all.
I reach the duck long before them and rescue it to sighs
and groans from the exhausted duck stalkers.
The incident quickly drops from my mind,
other than the haunting chants of "we've found the
duck man" that are still ravaging my brain. The self-styled
quirky author of the hip post-modern black comedy thriller,
'Broken Eggshells,' has become... the duck man? It is entirely
my fault - I am my own Frankenstein's monster.
The whole group meet up again and someone
mentions that we are nearby 'Speakers Corner' the last bastion
of British free speech. It seems a waste to come all this
way, fighting for the cause of freedom for plastic ducks,
and miss an opportunity such as this. I cannot remember
much of the speech, it was very Churchillian. '...never
in the field of publicity stunts, have so many ducks been
placed in so many places by so few... ...and they will
say- this was their finest hour... , ...we will place
them on the benches, on the lawns, on the pavements...
and so on.
The day was fast entering a level of
surrealism only ever experienced by Dougal and the rest
of the cast on 'The Magic Roundabout.' We decided to move
off in the sublime direction of Oxford Street. So far, we'd
had no bother at all and things began to settle into a more
sensible routine on through Leicester Square and towards
Trafalgar, leaving a duck here and there en route.
At Trafalgar Square, Neil, the 'impartial'
photographer, marches brazenly across the paving, five ducks
in hands, and launches them all straight into the nearest
fountain. Hopefully this hasn't raised too much attention,
several people are already risking pneumonia in order to
retrieve the ducks from the water, but everyone seems quite
pleased with the mysterious appearance of the ducks.
My mobile starts ringing. It's Steve,
the photographer. Considering he is in Trafalgar Square
as well, the fact he needs to phone me can only be bad news...
'Hi.'
'Security are picking up the ducks.'
Steve said more than that but I missed it. I scan the
surroundings to see Neil the photographer being accosted
by two security guards. It is clear from the body language
that up on the main pavement, a 'good cop/bad cop' playlet
is being enacted - badly.
By the time I arrive, bad cop has become
bored of not being able to shoot anyone and has wandered
off. I am told by good cop that we cannot place plastic
ducks in Trafalgar Square without written permission. I
start wondering whether they have a specific by-law for
every possible object you could leave here or whether they
have one 'catch all' rule. For the sake of amusement I opt
to believe in the former myriad of statutory codes, I picture
myself in some parallel reality with the Square covered
in Formica hippos. The security patrol are flicking through
a huge tome of by-laws muttering 'Damn, they overlooked
this one.'
Meanwhile, back in reality I am beginning to realise that
good cop/bad cop are in fact can't be bothered cop/off
to kill someone cop. We offer to pick up all the ducks
but his namesake can't be bothered and just tells us to
move on.
My terrorist brother is oblivious to
all of this. He is perched on top of one of the four large
lion statues surrounding Nelson's column. Three of the lion's
noses now have ducks on them and, if the negotiations with
the two awkwardly placed German girls succeed, the final
duck should soon be in place within a minute or so.
We move on and eventually all the ducks
are out of my care, we retire to the comfort of a decent
Irish pub. That evening, the 'Real' IRA blow up a small
Post office in Hendon.
Maybe all the ducks will get picked up by street cleaners
and trashed forever. Maybe they will all hover around London
for months on end before one finally reaches distant Kent...
the wait starts. By the time I get home that evening, the
first few reports are already drifting in. Within 36 hours,
a duck will be in the United States.
Within 2 months there will be ducks in Austria, Belgium,
The Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France,
Greece, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, The Bahamas, Canada,
The United States, Japan, Turkey, Pakistan, Australia,
and even Kent.
Articles began in the UK but media interest quickly spread
to the Netherlands, the United States and Australia - 16
articles in all within the first 2 months including two
radio interviews.
The area on the publishers website that gives stunning,
whizzy real time feedback on sales and royalties is down,
not to re-appear until late in the year. I shall have to
wait for the regular bland quarterly statement to arrive.
In the meantime, all I have to go no
is the sales rank on Amazon.co.uk which seems to dance around
wildly (sometimes I am up as high as position 1,836, next
minute I'm back up in the 20,000's). Each new article that
brings fresh traffic to the site causes the sales rank to
rise a little bit more.
I e-mail Amazon and ask them to decode
these mystic figures. I am told that the calculation is
based on Amazon.co.uk sales and is updated regularly. The
top 10,000 best sellers are updated each hour to reflect
sales over the preceding 24 hours. The next 100,000 are
updated once a day. The rest of the list is updated monthly,
based on several different factors. Suddenly, I realise
I am back in a game of monopoly and my brother is instigating
some three way money exchange that settles everyone's debts
and seems to furnish him with Mayfair.
Now, when people ask me about sales
I simply reply- the figures on Amazon have danced around
again, it's just something they do.
This all just leaves one vital unanswered
question- there's a plastic duck in The Bahamas, so what
am I doing here in Surrey?
I sit in the waiting area to BBC Radio
London Live, I have just passed a very famous person who
I didn't recognise in the slightest, a crowd of people rushed
up to him wanting an autograph. There are no big crowds
with copies of 'Broken Eggshells' to be signed. Then again,
there are no big crowds with plastic ducks to be signed
either, which is a good thing.
I am here to be interviewed
by Amy Lamé about
the ducks and the novel. Rest assured I shall be steering
the conversation onto the novel as much as possible.
Whilst I am waiting, the producer walks in and looks me
up and down for a few seconds. She then drums her pen down
a list on a clipboard and then looks up at me again.
'You must be the duck man, right?'
I let the words sink in and nod slowly. 'Yes, that's right,'
I answer, resigning myself to the fact.
I am the duck man.
