Waving cartoon penguin design

The big top has three holes in it now and Mr Pell has stopped pretending he can patch them. We played Skegness on Tuesday to nine people and a dog, and the dog left at the interval. You will want to hear about Pingo, so here it is. He is the last of the animals, a tin penguin no bigger than a teapot that Grandad Pell bought off a Grimsby sailor in 1961 and never once got to work properly. Every night before the finale the single spotlight finds him on the frayed red carpet, and he is supposed to waddle to the edge and bow.

Tonight the spring snapped halfway across the stage. He stopped with one flipper up, like a man hailing a cab in the rain, and stayed there. Nobody moved. The ringmaster held his hat against his chest. The band trailed off into a single bent note on the trombone. Then Dilys, who is nine and has no sense of occasion, came out from the wings in her odd socks, knelt beside him and waved back.

Mr Pell didn't shout. He just lifted the house lights a notch, the way he does when the tent is too cold for anyone to want to go home. Somebody in the back row started clapping, then the dog's owner, who had come back in after all, and then the whole three-quarters of the tent that was still in its seats.

I have put Pingo in the trunk with the sequins, flipper still up, because Dilys says he is waiting for a bus. I think she may be right. Write soon and tell me whether the flat in Bristol has a bath that drains.