Baby dragon hatching from an eggshell

The big top came down in Lincoln on Tuesday, and the dragon came with it, wrapped in blue canvas in the back of Mr Pruett's lorry. You asked whether it still hatches. It does, though only if the fellow working the tent gives the shell a proper tap with the wooden spoon, which he forgets about half the time. Last night a boy of about seven stood in front of it for ten minutes, waiting for something to happen.

Then the egg split, and out came this little creature, all elbows and sulky ears, and it looked straight at the boy and winked. I honestly thought the bulb had fused. The boy shrieked, his mother shrieked, and the whole tent went up like a kettle. Pruett swore it was the best night we've had since Skegness.

I have been thinking about that wink all week. Someone painted the original dragon years ago on a board the size of a door, and the hatchling was what made people step up to the rail. Nobody ever paid much heed to the shell pieces scattered round its feet, but I can't stop looking at them, every one a bit of somewhere it had already left.

Write back soon, and tell me whether your mother let you keep the ribbon from the prize pig. I'll bring the spoon. Yours, Bea