“You can’t polish a turd,” he had always been told, and yet, as he sat back and admired his handiwork, he felt vindicated in his refusal to believe the old adage. Granted, he’d had to embalm and varnish it first, but he’d done so delicately and with very little change to its glorious surface, and now it sat gleaming on his mantelpiece, having displaced the least prestigious of his trophies – the one for taking part in a penalty shootout at the local school fete.