A story with a happy ending

Clara's duck went swimming one day
Over the pond and far away.
Clara went "wah, wah, wah, wah"
And her little duck came swimming back.

With apologies to the original, and thanks to the staff at Nottingham's Dunelm Mill.

The blogger you would third-most like to have a pint with

The first set of prizes in the political blogging awards season have been handed out courtesy of the Witanegemot Club, and I am pleased to say this blog was among the winners.

I've never wanted the blog to be pigeonholed, so I was gratified as well as slightly amused to see it placed first in the "Best Centre Ground Blog" category (ahead of Mike Smithson's Political Betting) and second in the "Best Labour Party-supporting Blog" category (behind Bob Piper.)

Best of all, though, was my equal third place in the "Blogger You Would Most Like to Share a Pint With" category, alongside Tim Worstall and behind Devil's Kitchen and Guido Fawkes.

Cheers, guys! The Wadsworth 6Xs are on me.

Tears are not enough

Michael Vaughan's wept at his decision to stand down as England cricket captain. Jeremy Paxman cried when he discovered one of his ancestors had been sent to the workhouse. Tough-guy Aussie PM Bob Hawke shed tears about his daughter's drug addiction.

The BBC has been asking visitors to its site today "What makes men cry?" Here's my list of anniversaries, films, songs, books, and memories that have turned on the waterworks in recent years.

1. Good Friday.

2. Leaving my old home last November. The rest of the family had gone on ahead to the new house leaving me to say my final farewells to the place that had been my home on and off for nearly 20 years. I was fighting back the tears as I said goodbye, but I think they were tears of love as much as grief.

3. Thinking about how much I still miss my grandad, who died when I was 12.

4. That bit in Love Actually when, having declared his (unrequited) love for his best friend's girl (Keira Knightley), Andrew Lincoln walks away from her home telling himself: "Enough, enough now."

5. Thomas Hardy's Christmas poem, "The Oxen"

6. The opening lines of "I Trawl the Megahertz" by Paddy McAloon. "We start with the joyful mysteries before the appearance of ether, trying to capture the elusive: the farm where the crippled horses heal, the woods where autumn is reversed, and the longing for bliss in the arms of some beloved from the past."

7. The closing line of the hymn "I Cannot Tell, How He Whom Angels Worship," to the tune of "Danny Boy."

8. Listening to recordings of Winston Churchill saying: "We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

9. "Abraham, Martin and John," by Marvin Gaye. Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin...?

10. Heroism, literary and real. Sydney Carton's at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, Bigwig's at the end of Watership Down, the real-life heroism of my parents' generation who saved this country in WW2. I think this and No 1. are linked, somehow.