Dead Fish Go With The Flow

On Sunday I returned from Derry to discover that all the fish in our aquarium were dead. Floating. Belly up. Distended stomachs, some burst open. It looked painful.

A blue fighter fluttered its tail at the foot of the tank, clearly in distress. I rescued it into a saucepan of fresh water in the hope of saving it, but it shook out its brilliance one last time and died too.

A helpful child adding ‘pH Down’ to the tank for no other reason than thinking it would help the fish had killed the entire population. Our colony of Platys, the Neon Tetras there since day one. Harlequins; Mr Suckerfish and the rest. All belly up.

Angela looked out this morning. Mugsy the dysfunctional Tomcat is perched on the wooden guinea pig shelter viewing Titan and Ziggy interestedly. A snack, a feast or just a spectator sport. The other cat wouldn’t bother with them but Mugsy? I don’t know. Anyhow, he was chased and duly ran away, perhaps to come back another day.

Hannah Eastwood rescued a dog from a vets in Garvagh whilst on placement. Apparently the owners brought it in – a beautiful lively, black labrador pup –  because it had eaten the family hamster. And no, they weren’t worried that the dog may have bitten off more than it could chew and may be feeling a bit liverish with all that fur, toe nails and innards.

No, they wanted it put down, and Hannah rescued it.

As I said to Angela, if everyone applied that logic, our youthful fishkiller would have been humanely put to sleep also.

A Curse Upon All of Them, The Inbred Hoors

On Friday two young couples will get married.

One of these nuptials features a young man who was born into privilege, the son a mother of doubtful personal morality and a father who once professed a desire to be a feminine sanitary product. That says it all. It also says a lot about a general public that swoons and gushes frothily at the antics of these inbred cretins.

The uncle consistently tarnishes the good name of British industry abroad through his boorish activities.

The aunt has an ingrained reputation for ignorance and ill manners. The grandmother a pompous old dame, daughter of a stuttering father who ascended his position only due to the unacceptable marriage choice of his brother. Unacceptable? Yes, he wished to marry a divorcee who was also American and a commoner. In doing so he gave up his birthright. As for his grandfather? An accomplished deliverer of the faux pas and the mal mot. Denigrator of slitty eyes and foreign chaps.

The young man will marry a ‘commoner’ the patronising and archaic term held by the British Royalty for someone whose accident of birth renders them far from the world of shooting grouse in vast estates in Scotland; sipping cocktails in the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall; having their choice of young fillies on or off track; and travelling in their own fleet of limos, trains, planes and boats etc ad infinitum, ad nauseum. . .

Wherever the groom travels people will fall over with their obsequies; his young wife at least has been spared the test applied to determine whether his mother was previously handled goods at the time of her betrothal to his jug-eared buffoon of a father.

What an ill-advised union that was. He wankering after an old flame that could easily have been mistaken for one of his Polo Ponies. She a Princess of Tarts, a bulimiac in the making, trophy shag of a series of upper class twits and army officers. A couple of hundred years ago they would have been executed for treason for dipping that particular wick.

The world will watch agog on Friday at this marriage of privilege and commonage. At the pomp and splendour. People will awe and gape at these sliver spoon mouthed morons flouncing this way and that. And more’s the pity. Peasants glued to the TV on a day off work to watch those who never have to work a day in their cosseted-pampered lives, buoyed up by the general public purse. The very commoners, outside a police security line, that they view with distaste down the crooked line of their inbred nose.

And somewhere else, born into the real world, perhaps bound by poverty and the shackles of a poor job and worse prospects. Two others will join in holy matrimony, commoners, common as muck, common as you and I. And they will embark on a different journey from the two pampered and feted up and down Britain. He born with a silver spoon, she a commoner.

It could be worse, at least she’s not a Catholic.

A curse upon them and a plague on all their bloody houses.

Today’s Playlist

Easy listening whilst I work…

Alive and Kicking, Simple Minds

Back Down South, Kings of Leon

Blackhawk,Emmylou Harris

Brothers In Arms (Live,Abbey Road), Mark Knopfler

Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol

Closer, Kings Of Leon

Comfortably Numb, Roger Waters & Van Morrison

Empire State of Mind (Part II), Alicia Keys

Everything Is Free, Gillian Welch

Father And Son, Ronan Keating & Yusuf Islam

Fine Horseman, Erica Smith

Fix You, Coldplay

A Good Heart, Feargal Sharkey

Hurt,  Johnny Cash

In Spite Of All The Damage, The Be Good Tanyas

Lucky Man, The Verve

Pocahontas (Live), Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Someone Like You , Adele

Son of a Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield

Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

Strange Glue, Catatonia

Unchained Melody, U2

Waltz Across Texas Tonight, Emmylou Harris

Who’s Crying Now, Journey

Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd

Hutch Cassidy and the Sundance Pig

The Shawshank Rodention - back behind bars where they belong.

And another thing. . . as if by magic, when I was driving the children to school this morning what should blow across the road in front of me, only one of the Coleraine Borough Council composting bins! FFS like! You couldn’t have scripted it.

So, not only did we not get one when they were handed out free last week, but those houses that did get them are in large part empty and the bins are blowing down the street.

I debated briefly the possiblity of stopping and firing the damn thing in the boot of the car , say no more. However a bit of Catholic guilt kicked in and I thought of the shame and embarrassment of getting caught and charged with stealing a compost bin. It’s not even like it would be for me.

Anyhow, I digress. Last night after I returned home from being guest at the rugby club with Méabh, I was confronted with the news from a tearful Leo that the guinea pigs were still outside. It was nearly ten o’clock. A whole vista of hystrical children loomed before me.

The story so far, Santa very kindly decided to bestow upon our house the little furry gifts that are guinea pigs. To be honest there’s something mildly amusing about the way they kinda dunt about the place. They also chirp at each other in guinea pig language. The one bit I understand is guinea pig for “look at that big bollocks trying to catch us” when they fix me with their beady eyes.

I rather scathingly derided my daughter for being out-thought by a guinea pig once when she couldn’t recapture them. It’s as if they heard the remark and have taken great delight in outfoxing (or out guinea-pigging) me ever since as I try and get them back to their hutch. The wee hoors.

Back to last night’s shenanigans. Leo was distraught because he had been unable to recapture the two animals after they escaped from their enclosure and having taken refuge under the garden shed they refused to come out. He was upset that Sorcha who was asleep would wake up in the morning and, upon finding out that Ziggy and Titan were at large, would be inconsolable. I was surprised at how upset he was. Usually it’s only that bad when he’s asked to do something about the house, or lift his unclean boxers.

My observation to himself and Cáit to man up a bit, that nature was red in tooth and claw and that it was unlikely we would ever see the darned animals again, went down like a hooker with traintracks. My worry was that Mugsy our tomcat or some other blood crazed animal would wipe them out with one swipe of his paw.

So, undaunted, out I headed once more into the dark. This time I spied them, there they were still under the shed, holed up like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, merrily scampering about eating grass as they do, and no doubt shitting prodgiously as they do also with great abandon. Vigour even.

Unable to coax them out from under the shed, the hunt was called off due to bad light as the rescue services might say. Next morning at the crack of dawn Angela got out there first and managed to catch Ziggy. He quite biddably walked over to her when he saw her. Titan is more of a recalcitrant rodent and an hour later he was still at large.

More to the point he had broken cover and left the safety of the shed and was on the loose. We had lost track of his whereabouts too which was worrying. I had heard reports of buzzards over at the University. Would one swoop and have Cuy for tea?

Eventually though, even Titan obviously longed for the green green grass at home, as we spied him  scurrying along and trying to break back into his wee stockade. Finally, the Cool Hand Luke of the rodent world was trapped with nowhere to go.

As he backed himself into a corner I grabbed him and within full earshot of my assistants Cáit and Leo held him up to my face and said venomously  “Titan, you wee bastard.” He looked at me with the beady eyes, his cow’s lick funnier than ever and replied in guinea pig “ha ha you big bollocks I won again.” Well I imagine that’s what he said.

The punishment for the two of them?  A couple of days in lock up in the house methinnks. I couldn’t be arsed with another episode of that.

And  as for the the compost bin? Thanks be to God we didn’t have one on this occasion for we’d have never got the two hoors out if they’d gone in there. Voluntarily that is.

Still, hopefully one day we’ll maybe get one, a bin that is. . . and so the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. Just like the guinea pigs.