From the Kitchen Table
Part 6: Fish TV
By Gillian Wood
Right now I am working. Honest I am. Tomorrow I’m doing a lecture on chords and chord progressions STOP WAKE UP DON’T STOP READING! Ah, you see you were going to weren’t you? You thought I was going to carry on talking about chords, but I’m not. Ha! But that is what I’m doing tomorrow. And alongside that, I shall also be rehearsing in the morning and playing at night, so the chords shall be squeezed in some time in the afternoon between 2pm and 5.30pm, anyone want to come along? I’ll get you on the guest list, free drinks (ok, it’s not a gig, it’s a lecture on chords). Anyway, tomorrow is also my birthday. I shall be 82. It is a grand age and I’m not looking too bad for it either. Great eh? On with the story.
So, on Saturday my ginger flatmate and I went to our local high road for a wander. There are those that know of this local high road and the dangers that lurk there. They are more dangerous than the permanent gathering of alcoholics, or the ‘DVD, want DVD’ people, or the man with the Confederate flag and pet crow (haven’t seen him for a while though), or crazy shouting Irish man (he’s vanished too, last seen going for the writer after the final ever Revolex gig, what a band, they’re all in rehab now). Sorry, I digress. These dangers are even MORE SCARY than the herds of mothers with three wheeled prams and organic children. These dangers come in the form of the 99p shops, Fancy Goods shops, poundstretching shops, second hand clothes shops and markets where you can buy fish…..
Yeh, we bought fish. Six of them. It’s my birthday!
The ginger flatmate and I just thought we would go and say hello to the fish. Then we saw a bowl which was £30 and a little over our budget so we went of in search of a cheaper bowl. Unfortunately the best we came up with was a frosted pink, etched glass, fancy good or the ginger’s inspired idea of a blender (‘but if we cut off the plug so no one can actually blend them then it’ll look great on the kitchen table, a real feature!).
I said no to the blender.
We went back to the shop an hour later. And, it was beautiful! A new bowl had been put out, slightly smaller than the original one. We took the bowl inside and inquired about the price. £12 it was. So we bought it and some gravel, and six guppies (all male), some guppy food (they are fussy eaters) and took them home.
They are now on the kitchen table. We no longer watch TV, or talk to each other. We watch fish. They go round and up and down and occasionally stop to flutter their tails at you (flirty gay fish). And now my life is complete. I have fish, I am 82, I talk about chords. Yeh!
