Here's a 20 minute video of some ducklings walking through Cambridge to get to the River Cam

It’s a dark and scary world some times, isn’t it? Terrorism. Economic collapse. Boris Johnson talking about Hitler.

So here’s something to lighten the mood a bit. It’s a very long video of a family of ducklings on tour around Cambridge.

(Cambridge is a city, okay? It counts. It’s an entirely legitimate story for us. Shut up.)

I’m not going to lie to you. It takes a couple of minutes to get going. And it’s never exactly the quickest of exodus-es (exodi?) even when it does.

But it is nonetheless just adorable, watching a mother duck marching her (quick count) 13 children through the streets of one of England’s most beautiful cities. They go through Corpus Christi. They pass through St Catherine’s. They waddle through Queens.

They even cross a couple of roads, ably assisted by a couple of porters – one of whom, at the 15.30 mark, has to lift a baby duck up some steps oh my god it’s so cute I almost can’t take it.

There also seem to be a lot enthusiastic students with camera phones, one of whom, at a crucial moment, yells, “This happened the other year, too!” Alas, at that point, the video cuts out, so we will never know how the story ends.