The Goldfish from Glasgow - Part Two: The Tank Of Doom

This is a true story and it happened about three weeks ago chez Gordon-Smith.

It was like a scene from CSI or Bones or – if you follow me – like Cluedo.  The scene was the Conservatory, there were four dead bodies in a lavishly-appointed and, as the estate agents say, a highly desirable residence, there was no visible cause of death, no signs of violence, only these poor mortal remains.  Only one remained alive and he, one would think, would be the obvious suspect.  However…

Hang on.   Before anyone wonders why this Tale of Horror hasn’t been all over the newspapers, perhaps I should mention the four bodies in question were guppies, jolly little tropical fish who had, for reasons which were unclear, made the Great Change.

The cats were guiltless.  It’s not that they hadn’t been interested, you understand, but the glass lid baffled them.  It wasn’t, as The Other Half, postulated, extreme heat, caused by my wanton buying of a heater and whacking it up to full temperature. No, the thermometer showed the temperature to be just fine.   So what the dickens was it?

As I said last week, I’d slipped into Guppiedom by accident, as it were.  Now I went looking on the internet and found my preparations of a heated tank, a filter, plants and a bottle of Tapsafe to de-chlorinate the water were all very well, but not enough.  What had seen off the finny denizens was the chemical imbalance of the water.  Under the reproachful eye of the last remaining guppie, a little orange chap called Carrot, I hastened to correct my mistake.

I lovingly tended the water in the tank with an aquarium start-up kit. It’s pleasantly scientific to faff around with vials and pipettes and take water samples and add other chemicals to see how its all doing.  It takes about twenty days or so, and all the time, Carrot, the great survivor, hung on in there.

The Book (the leaflet that came with the start-up kit) said to add Zebra Danios and Harlequins, hardy little tykes that can take a bit of chemical imbalance and help the process along.  So in went three stripy Zebras, Spot (natch) Crossing and Serengeti, with the two Harlequins, Easter and Evans.  (Named after the Harlequin Rugby players by Lucy.)  And Carrot, despite the fact he should have been dead, continued to flourish.  Mind you, the Zebras confused Carrot.  He wanted to swim along, to shoal out with his mates, but Zebras don’t swim like guppies.  He tried, bless him, but went off sulking in the waterweed.  The poor thing obviously was having an identity crisis.

Came the great day.  The water in the test vials was clear; the tank was now chemically balanced and – thank goodness – I wouldn’t have to subject Poor Carrot to a course of Freudian analysis but could simply Add More Guppies.

I picked Jenny up from college that evening.  After chit-chat about the day, I said brightly, “I’ve bought five guppies.”

She looked at me in stark horror.  “Mum,” she said, in a sort of death-rattle whisper, “How could you?  Whatever will Dad say?  He’ll go mental!”

“Your Dad’s fine,” I said, puzzled.

“You’ve told him!!!”

“Yeah, I spoke to him earlier on the phone.”  She continued to look worried to death. “There isn’t a problem.  He doesn’t mind.”

She continued, as they say in old-fashioned fiction, to search my face, then understanding dawned.  “Hang on. You didn’t say puppies, did you?”

The Goldfish From Glasgow

It was Elspeth who started it.  When she rang up from Glasgow to say she’d bought two goldfish (CJ and Marylyn) I chirruped happily down the phone to her about goldfish.   We’d had goldfish some time ago.  Lazarus, who changed his name after I brought him back from the dead by giving him the kiss of life (you blow air through a straw over the finny friend’s gills) and Warty Pete, who lived up to his name (he could have been an extra on Blackadder) who lived a long, long time.

So Elspeth = 2 goldfish = Fine.  Until she wanted to bring them home for the holidays.  We’d long since got rid of the watery home that contained Lazarus and Warty Pete.  No problem, I said.  We’ll buy a new tank.

The expense? said The Other Half.

Sorted, I assured him. We’ll buy a cheap plastic tank.  Don’t worry.

So the kids and I went shopping.

Well, you know how it is.  Once actually in the shop (and I’m a bit of pushover for this sort of thing anyway) the My First Fishtank and the one with Spongebob Squarepants decals seemed a bit naff compared to an elegant glass cube, complete with LED lights and a combined air pump and filter. And once we’d got it home, filled it with gravel and planted it up, it looked lovely.  If Barbara Hepworth had designed fishtanks, they’d look like this. It was, I have to admit, just a tadge more expensive than I’d bargained for.

There were grumbles within the Home.

Especially when, struck by just how nice it did look, my mind turned to tropical fish.  Before the Warty Pete era, we’d kept tropical fish. I can’t say they ever did frightfully well, as they seemed to drop dead with grim regularity, but, before they made the great change, they did look nice.  Maybe this time it would be different???  After all, it was so posh,  it seemed a bit elaborate for a holiday home for two visiting goldfish.

So I added a heater to the elegant glass cube and popped in five guppies.

What about the expense? said The Other Half.  What about the goldfish?

Sorted, I assured him. We’ll buy a cheap plastic tank.  Don’t worry.

So that’s what I did (that’s what, perhaps, I should have done in the first place, I know)  adding, to turn a bog-standard B+B for goldfish into something more resembling a luxury holiday let, a pump and filter, some plants and a little arch for them to swim through.  CJ and Marylyn are, even as I write, disporting themselves happily on the windowsill of the kitchen.

But what about the guppies in their elegant cube? Fate had slipped the lead into the boxing glove and was waiting in the wings…

TO BE CONTINUED….

Sherlock Holmes and the Viking's Dilemma

I had looked into Baker Street to update my website, www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com when I found a laughable misunderstanding had arisen.  Mrs Hudson, mounted on a penny-farthing bicycle, was cycling round and round our room while Holmes, in a state of some perturbation, was attempting to make her desist by loading the contents of a box of boxer cartridges into his hair-trigger revolver and taking pot-shots at her as she whirled past.

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed.  “Why is our worthy landlady biking round the room?”

“Because she is a little deaf,” he explained, stepping to one side as Mrs Hudson whirled past.  “I said, “Admit the VIKING, not, “Do a bit of BIKING!”

He loosed off another round of bullets and this time a shot went home.

Mrs Hudson, leaving the remains of the mangled bike behind, leapt lightly from the saddle.  “Very good, Mr Holmes,” she said and, laughing heartily at her own mistake, scurried from the room to return seconds later with a magnificent yellow-bearded, yellow-haired man, dressed in leather and swinging a huge hammer.

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed.  “You astound me!  How did you know this man was a Viking?  What little clue, what subtle indication, what almost imperceptible fact led you to that conclusion?”

“The fact he is wearing a helmet with bulls’ horns,” said Holmes.

I was amazed at his perspicacity.

“Now, sir!” said Holmes, addressing our guest.  “In what way can I be of assistance?”

The Viking kicked the remnants of the penny-farthing out of the way and sank down upon the ottoman, his face a frenzied mask of worry.

“Mr Holmes, you are my only hope!  My only remaining relative in the whole world is my aged Aunt, who I love dearly.  Crippled, infirm and with her sight failing, she waits for me at my little home, Dunpillaging, across the wild, tempestuous sea.  Her one desire, Mr Holmes, is to own a beautiful stainless steel sink.  And can I find one? No.  My life is bitter indeed when I think of how she yearns for a beautiful stainless steel sink and how crushed with sorrow she will be when I have to Confess All and return empty-handed, feasting on the acid fruit of failure.  Which will be,” he added, “about all I’ll get to eat when she realises she hasn’t got what she wants.”

“She’ll have a sinking feeling?” I suggested.

Holmes idly hit me over the head with a violin to curtail my levity.  As I emerged from the wreckage, I felt I had struck the wrong note.  Several wrong notes, in fact.

“You say your Aunt is crippled?” said Holmes, his sympathies keenly engaged.

“Yes.”

“Infirm?”

“Yes.”

“With failing sight?”

“Yes.”

A rare smile crossed Holmes’ finely chiselled features.  “Fear not! The solution is elementary.”

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed.  “You astound me!  What solution can there possibly be to this poor wanderer’s abstruse problem?”

For an answer, my friend picked up a builder’s hod which was lying, together with other bits and pieces, such as a speckled band, five orange pips, a blue carbuncle and a beryl coronet on the mantelpiece.  “Give this to your Aunt,” he said, pressing the hod into the Viking’s eager hands.  “This is the object of her desires, this is all she craves.  After all,” he added as our visitor got up to leave, “a hod is as good as a sink to a blind Norse.”