A flurry of excitement, in my office at least, as St Ives' share price jumped by 14.25p - almost 30% - to 62.5p yesterday. What could have caused such a leap? The shares have been bumping along in the 45-50p range for a month or more. Visions of a break-up bid, one of those much-talked-about consolidation plays, or some sort of private equity swoop, danced before me. Just the other day I read in the FT that there's supposedly somewhere between $300bn-$400bn in private equity funds kicking around looking for something to be spent on.

The actuality appears rather less exciting. If the directors were aware of any potential bid they would have to inform the Stock Exchange, and no such announcement has been forthcoming. The value of shares traded was actually pretty small, and it seems the bounce came as a result of a general pick-up in the bombed out small mid-cap market, currently home to plenty of undervalued companies.

It's a measure of what a weird world we're living in that even at the heady heights of 60-something pence, the theoretical price of the whole group is less than the value of Clays alone. I must remind myself that the 52-week high is actually a somewhat more realistic 245p.