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.