It's been a busy day today. I am feeling much better, despite coughing till my eyes fall out several times an hour, and to celebrate we shifted furniture about for a while. Well, I say "we". In fact, Mr WithaY did it and I flapped about behind him with a duster.
Oh, reader, the filth! The FILTH. We live in disgusting slatternly surroundings, despite the best efforts of the Staff.
Why are we moving furniture? You may well ask.
Is it because we are playing some large-scale Chinese puzzle game with the entire house?
Is it so we can get into those really tricky corners for a good hard clean?
Is it so we can finally measure the exact internal dimensions of the sitting room?
No.
We are getting an aquarium.
It is our Christmas present to ourselves, and we are very excited about it. It will be a tropical freshwater tank; we plan to get lots of small shoaling fish, hopefully ones which will flit about appealingly and not try to kill each other. We had a place for it all planned out, till Mr WithaY read one of his new "How Not To Kill All Your Tropical Freshwater Fish Instantly" books, and we learned that the place we had planned to put the tank was almost exactly wrong.
We readjusted our thinking and decided on the diametrically opposite corner of the room, hence the need to move furniture. Oh, and now there's nowhere to put the Christmas tree*. Bugger.
We collect the tank on Sunday, get it set up, and a week after that we can introduce the fish.
"Fish, tank. Tank, fish."
Other news: We listened to the last hour or so of the last ever Terry Wogan breakfast show this morning, and I had a little tear in my eye at the end of it. Yes, I know. But he has been a part of my life as long as I can remember, usually in the background to the early morning getting ready for school/college/work panic, and I will miss that. Not that I listened much of late, either being on the train and unable to, or in my office at home with Planet Rock on, but hey, it's the thought that counts.
Oh, also: I saw this, and I agree. It is a tricky ethical area.
*We're really late with everything this year. If we carry on at this rate, it will be about February before we get the tree up, and August before the mulled wine and sausage rolls make an appearance.
6 comments:
I had a small (20 gal) tank when I was a teen. I still remember some of the mysteries that occured.
My favorite was the plecostomus, why I don't know, they are ugly.
Fresh or saltwater? There was a huge saltwater tank at my friends eye doctors office... I used to drive her twice a year. I loved watching those fish.
Fish, tank, tank fish. Brilliant. I hope the tank doesn't reject them, and you come down one morning to find them all catapulted across the room.
What fish are you hoping to get mate? It wold be really cool if it were piranha?
I listened to the last hour of Wogan as well, just for the history I guess. It's like when John Peel died. Felt like I lost a friend as he had always been on in the background at some point.
Two fish in a tank. One said to the other "do you want to drive?"
Oh my, Dan's piranha made me remember a Christmas I had totally forgotten.
Invited to a family's house for Christmas dinner... about ten of us soldiers with no family... what shall be bring we ask.... a sack of goldfish the man says.... we fed his piranha. When there was nothing left but tails floating around, they ate those too.
I don't remember what we had to eat.
Eloh, you will be familiar with all the effort that goes into setting one up. I had assumed you just filled a glass box with tapwater and popped some fish in. I was mistaken.
They will be freshwater fish, we are not prepared to manage a marine tank. Yet.
Spence, I think I may be channelling Tommy Cooper, and not for the first time. We will be setting up mist nets around the tank to ensure the fish are retained within the perimeter.
Dan, a mixture. We are setting up a charmingly-named "community tank" where I hope they will all get along like on Sesame Street. No piranha.
Middle Sis, haven't you got babies to be delivering? Or jokes to be writing for the crackers?
Eloh. I said NO piranha. And your story makes it very clear why not.
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