A goldfish called Serberton

         

My neighbour Alice has this pet goldfish that is breaking all records for longevity in the fish world - or so she thinks. But there are certain things Alice doesn’t know, and it’s better for both of us she remain ignorant.

It all began last month with Alice and me sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and watching her goldfish swimming in its miniature aquarium on the top of her walnut veneer sideboard. Well, the fish is not exactly swimming; it's more of a kind of languishing. It floats in a patch of lettuce-green waterweed. The only sign that it is alive is the occasional rippling of its diaphanous dorsal fin and a bubble or two that escapes from its mouth.         

 I didn’t know you had a goldfish Alice, I tell her. Ah yes, she says, my little Cerberton. She explains to me that she bought the goldfish to keep her company years ago when her husband was on the road selling vacuum cleaners. She and her husband Herb had lived in a small flat where no pets were permitted. She hadn't been sure whether the landlord's edict had also run to goldfish, so just to be sure she'd sneaked the fish in one day when the landlord wasn't looking.

 I called him Cerberton, Alice tells me. You know, like the suburb in London where I was born. That little fish has been great company to me, especially these last few years since poor Herb passed on. We never had any children you know.

 She sighs a regretful sigh and pours me a second cup of tea as she continues to fill in the picture. Of course Cerberton was only a bit of a tiddler then. Thirty-five years ago last month, it was.

I have no reason to mistrust Alice’s veracity but I am amazed that a goldfish could live so long. I know cockatoos can live to a ripe old age and turtles too, but such longevity in a goldfish stretches my credulity to its limit. Perhaps Alice is mistaken? She is at the age when many begin to become somewhat vague.

We finish our cups of tea and I go back to shoring up the posts and hammering another generation of galvanized nails into the palings of our territorial fence. That fence has blown down in the wind for the third time in as many years. I have suggested to Alice several times that we renew it but she resists and every time we have a really nasty gale I am back to shoring it up again.

But it's not the cost of her half share to build a new fence that worries Alice; it’s the notion of change. I've got so used to that old fence, she tells me, I'd be unhappy if it were gone. It's such a lovely smoky grey, isn’t it? And then there’s the lichen - it’s taken years to grow that. It was like she was pleading for a favored work of art or an artifact of some significant and I, like always, give in.

Later that month Alice is in a bit of a quandary. She tells me over the fence that her sister who lives in Launceston is sick. She laments that she can't go to stay with her for a few days because there's nobody to look after her Cerberton.

I know what she’s getting at, so to save time I tell that it would be an honor for me to look after the little feller. Surely, I tell her, all he needs is a bit of grub each day? I could put his glass tank on my kitchen bench where I could keep a close eye on him.

 Alice is ever so grateful for my offer but not entirely convinced that it is as simple as I make out. But he'll be lonely without me, she says. He’ll miss me. I talk to him all the time. Well, I’ll talk to him, I assure her. I'll go in and talk to him every time I make myself a cup of coffee and I drink lots of coffee. She still looks a little doubtful, but with a few more words of assurance I manage to convince her that I am an experienced goldfish-sitter who will treat her goldfish as though he were my very own.

 Ah, if only life could be so simple! Three days after Alice's departure I come home and find Cerberton acting like a miniature shipwreck. He is floating upside down on the surface of his glass tank and no matter how many times I right him with my finger he rolls right back over. I decide eventually that there is no getting away from it, Cerberton is no more, he has, as the Goon said, shuffled off this mortal coil.

 My God! What have I done wrong?  What am I to do now? Here is a fish that has survived thirty-five years in my neighbour's loving care and I have killed it in the course of three days. In my mind I go over all the things that I have done or not done, to try and find a reason for Cerberton's demise. But there seems to be no reason. Have I been so unlucky to be his keeper on the very day that he has been designated by fate to depart to that big fish-tank in the sky?

 Surely not, I tell myself. The chance of that happening is about the same odds as me winning the lottery. So, perhaps it is something not quite so coincidental? Perhaps I hadn't been talking to the little feller enough? Perhaps my casual good mornings and how are you today chats, weren't enough to sustain his tenuous grip on life?

 Although, I did remember one quite long conversation I'd had with him on the second morning about the consequence of my literary dry up. And I'll swear that morning he'd responded to my words with an extra bubble or two. Was he upset by my confession? Did it affect him? I have no idea. The only thing I do know is something has to be done about it. I don't think I'm up to facing Alice’s tears on her return.

It is the man in the pet shop who eventually solves the dilemma for me. When I show him poor Cerberton's body, he immediately identifies it as a carpis manifico. Quite a common species, he assures me, replacement will not be too difficult. Do I go along with the minor conspiracy? Or do I subject myself to self condemnation and Alice to sorrow and tears? I toss it up in my mind. Conspiracy wins hands down.

 The shop owner and I wander from glass tank to glass tank in his pet shop, peering amongst the weeds and exotic paraphernalia that litter the bottoms of the tanks for a replacement of the extinct and rapidly decomposing Cerberton. And he is right, they are many variations on a theme and it isn't too long before we find the absolute replica of the late Cerberton hiding in the fluorescent hull of a miniature Titanic.  That's him, I tell the pet shop owner. That’s the one I want. This carpis manifico looks as old and languid as Cerberton ever looked.

Back home I very carefully follow the pet shop owner's instructions on feeding little Cerberton 2 a tiny pinch of the flaky fish food, any more and it will be too much. Which, considering the spoonfuls I fed his predecessor, at least solves the mystery of his untimely death. Though, as I watch the little fish rise slowly in a very Cerberton-like manner to take the food, I wonder about the other unsolved mystery of his predecessor’s unlikely age. The pet shop owner has assured me that goldfish rarely live beyond fifteen years - eighteen at the most.

I lean closer to the tank and eyeball the tiny fish through the watery glass and ask the question. What do you think Cerberton 2? Do you reckon there was another goldfish-sitter all those years ago that pulled the same scam on the original model? You might be the third in line? The fishy stare and string of bubbles I get in reply tells me nothing.

 When Alice gets back at the end of the week she is delighted when she sees the goldfish languishing peacefully in his glass tank. She leans forward and warbles her greetings to him. Cerberton 2 rises to the surface like he always does around feeding time. See, Alice cries, he knows my voice. Sure I tell her, why not. There are times when the truth is not the best policy.   

 

Cradle Mountain

Dear S.K. There’s a picture of Cradle Mountain on the television. Cradle makes me feel a bit sentimental. You are right; Cradle Mountain does call you back. Remember how I had commented how different it was when I walked around Dove Lake and climbed the Cradle forty years before with my family and friends. We only met about half a dozen people that day and this time there was almost a constant line of walkers from one end to the other. Ah, me, progress!          

But back at Waldheim I remember when I stood on the verge of the tree line looking out across the valley, waiting for you to finish your shower, just how isolated it could be. The tourists had all gone back to their comfy hotels and motels - the Overland Track hikers all gone - heading south towards Lake St Claire. It seemed like we were the only ones left in the world. Certainly, we were the only ones left in Waldheim.          

Remember how there had been a brief storm before you went off to those so inadequate shower rooms. The storm left a kind of rosy light behind. It infused everything, the huts and the trees behind me; the valley in front, it all glowed as if lit by unseen lanterns. It looked like it was millions of years old. I could have imagined giant marsupials down there in that valley, reining supreme. Sure, the single weather-greyed wooden walkway was there, but so integral was it with its surrounds it was - or could have just been, part of the general configuration. 

Then there was a movement in front and I saw this fat old orange-tinged wombat coming out of the ferns to grab a quick snack before dark. I walked right up to it and it just lifted its head, blinked and went back to chewing. Okay, I said, don’t talk, you’re a midget compared with what I have just imagined. You wouldn’t think that a fat old wombat could be so stuck up, would you? The wombat still ignored me and went on chomping. 

It was then I saw on the side of the distant mountain, a slow moving patch of red in the losing light coming down the slope. Curiously enough such a sight didn’t impose on the vast emptiness all around. It was like the present also needed to be recognised and in its own strange way it added, rather than subtracted, from the emptiness. And curiously enough in retrospect, that touch of alien colour reminded me of some of those white figure drawings you do on a black background. The ones where you had given a touch of alien colour to the faces of the otherwise blank fingers. There was a similarity. Something to do with minimalism, I suspect.          

And by the way, I ran into Bob Brown at his photo exhibition in the Salamanca Gallery some time back and commented to him that one of the photos he took must have been taken at almost the same spot that I just described. I told him how I felt about that lone returning hiker. How alien in such emptiness. He told me that he remembered taking the photo well, because just after he‘d taken the shot he heard in the distance the sound of a dog baying in hunting mode.How strange! Who what or how? 

I looked back at his photo and it suddenly seemed a little flatter than it had been a few seconds before. I sometimes think in my more fanciful moments that photos need more than just an unmoving description of the past, they are too flat; they need audio or movement to bring them to full life. But then, they wouldn’t be photos would they. They’d be something else. They’d be being there! 

The washing machine story

I met Bill in the local grocery store. He had a heap of groceries in his basket and I was only buying a loaf of bread and a carton of milk. I stepped aside to let him go in before me. There were still three people in front and it was one of those times when each one of them paid by bankcard. By the time they had slipped their cards through the machine, being accepted and signed the slip, it took quite a while.

The man who I had let in before me half turned around and winked at me. Weren’t cards meant to make shopping quicker and simpler?

Yeah, I said, for the bank and the store but not for us.

We who only stand and wait, he said. He changed his full basket from one hand to the other and groaned. Thanks for letting me in front.

When I reached the counter I paid by cash, the same way as he did and I was out of there in no time. I caught up to him in the car park where his vehicle was parked next to mine. It was a yellow campervan. He was stuffing his groceries through the middle door into a kind of large wicker basket.

It looks like you might be going away, I said.

He closed the door and shook his head rather sadly. The wife and I were going. You know, retired now, kids all grown up. Spending our inheritance we joked, but unfortunately my wife got sick. You know how it goes; life chucks you a bit of a wobbly now and again. I’ve had to go back to work for a while to pay off the medical bills.

I told him how sorry I was and asked him what kind of work he did?

White goods mechanic, he said.

Bad luck for him and his wife, good luck for me. Like maybe you fix washing machines? I asked.

I explained to him that my washing machine had broken down a couple of weeks ago and I had been using my daughter’s machine until I could get someone to take it in for repairs.

Sure, he said, I’ll fix it. Half the price of the downtown guys too.

I gave him my address and he turned up the following day and within an hour the machine was going like a new top. An hour’s work, fifty bucks, good all round.

It was a nice sunny day that day and neither of us had much to do so I offered him a cup of coffee and we sat on my bench in the sun and talked.

I asked him how his wife was. He shook his head sadly. She used to be great - a naturally happy person, looking forward to our trip away and all that, then suddenly, without any warning, Bonbon died.

Bonbon? Somebody close was it?

Not somebody exactly, something. My wife’s Pomeranian. Well ours actually, but mostly my wife’s. She took him everywhere. Poor little Bonbon, she found him in his basket one morning just before last Xmas. All cold and stiff. She’s never got over it. I took her to the doctor but that didn’t do much good, he just gave her drugs and it made her more depressed. A psychologist tried to talk her around and that didn’t do any good either. She finished up in a clinic and that cost a heap. He smiled then, wistfully. Nothing seemed to help. Goodbye trip I say.

Look, perhaps it takes more time, I told him at my gate. I thought of my own situation in the past. Sometimes time is the only healer?

I hope so, he said, without a great deal of conviction. I’ve been thinking lately that I might put the van on the market and pay off the debt.

Give it time, I shouted after him as he drove off.

For weeks after, every time I saw a campervan passing in the street I checked it out. But no, I didn’t see Bill or his wife that I never met riding by. I could only hope that it did come out well for both of them.

Some time later I was sitting down reading the ads in the paper. I was looking for someone selling sheep manure for the garden and as my eye slid down the columns, another ad under livestock caught my eye. Someone was advertising for a home for a half grown Pomeranian puppy. A sweet little companion for a lady the ad said. I went to my kitchen drawer to get the scissors and cut the ad out. I picked up Bill’s address from the phone book and sent the ad to him. I signed it from a Well-wisher.

Would my little hint work? As it turned out I didn’t have all that long to wonder what happened to Bill and his wife. Early in autumn I saw a woman sitting in a loaded up yellow campervan outside the same grocer shop where I’d first met Bill. She was sitting up, smiling happily. There was a little, flat-nosed, golden-haired dog with a red ribbon round its neck standing on her lap, yapping out at the world in general. I never did particularly like Pomeranians much but this one seemed to be a little beauty.

I was in a hurry that day and I didn’t stop to verify my assumption that it was Bill’s missus. I reckon it was a pretty sure bet that it was, though.

Welcome to Geoff's blog!

These are random posts about various phases of my life, in no particular order, just as they come to mind.

Most will be uplifting some with a touch of humour and some with a touch of sadness - like life really.

I hope you will enjoy them.

Let me know!