Out for a duck

This should not look like a sexy duck to you.

I've been trying to learn a new thing every day, and today I was worried that, stuck at my desk with nobody but a database to talk to, I'd learn nothing. Luckily, I had a 9pm haircut scheduled, and the garrulous barber cutting my hair told me that Salvador Dali had sex with ducks.

Dali? Romancing a moorhen? Feeling up a heron? Goosing a swan? Banging a duck? If nothing else, you have to say that the image of that moustachied maniac, plunging himself into a waterfowl, is rather surreal. Still, it has to be true: there no way a man armed with scissors, who earns his pay by not removing your ears, would be anything less than honest.

"Dali doing ducks" was never likely to be a sentence pronounced on the set of Sesame Street, which deprives children of that charming alliteration. (I don't want to think what a Spanish version of The Little Red Hen would be like, based on this vindictive and frankly implausible stereotype of Iberians.) My barber continued to educate me, by saying that Dali had gone to a brothel to have carnal knowledge of ducks.

I exclaimed that I was surprised. It's one thing for a renowned painter to have a bit of a thing for Jemima Puddleduck. It's quite another to be told that Spanish men were so up for it with a mallard or coot that there would be a viable business supplying sexy ducks to senors in classy surroundings. It's not quite a menage a trois in an expensive car (thank you, Biggie Smalls) but a whole bunch of men, in a knocking shop, doing it with ducks?

All I can say is that I'm glad we have technological gadgets like smartphones and Playstations to distract us. Better that than being a duck-f**ker.

I had a good haircut though. We also learned that National Service is quite boring if you've blown your knees out skateboarding as a child, as you'll end up working as a storeman, doling out rifles. And I found out that after a long day of work, slowly vegetating, having my hair cut actually wakes me up. When I want to sleep.