The doughnut, ratified
Two cameras, two new witnesses, the same brother on the stopwatch, and a time two and a half seconds slower than the one they rejected.
Everything they asked for, and then some.
Two cameras, at ninety degrees to each other, both running continuously from before the doughnut was weighed until after the witnesses had signed. A calibrated stopwatch. The doughnut weighed on scales with a certificate, in shot, against a printed copy of the specification. Two independent witnesses of good standing, which the guidance does not define, so I found a solicitor and a retired magistrate and had them sit either side of the table like a tribunal.
My brother kept the watch again, on the grounds that changing timekeeper after a rejection looks like an admission.
34.02
Here is the thing nobody warned me about. Knowing that you are being filmed from two angles makes you slow. For thirty-four seconds I was aware of my own mouth in a way I have never been before and hope never to be again. I did not lick my lips because I could not stop thinking about not licking my lips, and thinking about it costs you about a second every ten.
The letter came in eleven weeks. It is one paragraph. It is entirely correct and my name is spelled properly and there is a certificate.
So the record I hold is worse than the record I do not hold. Both of them are mine. Only one of them exists.
The certificate is in the hall, by the coats, where people see it on the way out. The 31.44 is a video file on a hard drive in a drawer, and I know exactly which of the two I show people, and so does my brother, who has stopped mentioning it.