Fish Are Friends, Not Food

I've never liked eating fish. Sure, as a kid I was plied with fishfingers. But I'm talking about a whole fish, grilled, steamed, roasted or poached. Fried, even. The whole, stary-eyed, fish-looking thing on your plate never really did it for me. Shrimps, and shrimp-shaped things I can handle, from the prawn upwards to the lobster. Otherwise, shellfish are out: oysters, clams, mussels. I don't know why this is. It's not that I particularly object to the fish as a taste (though a strong fishy taste or smell does have me gagging): I think my swimming and snorkelling and diving and generally being at one with the water from a very early age has made me think of the inhabitants of the water as, well, nice things. Not things to be hunted and eaten.

I don't feel the same about cows and pigs and sheep, but then, if I owned a farm, perhaps I'd be the worst kind of farmer: I'd start getting attached to those lumbering sources of income, who, once I'd given each their own name and developed what I considered a personal, one-on-one relationship with every single one of them, I'd find myself unable to kill them and realise that I wasn't running a beef farm, I was running a cow zoo.

Why fish, why now? Well, sadly, I have to report a death in the family. A devoted, little-seen, quietly-spoken, keeps-himself-to-himself member of the clan has passed to his Watery Grave, is now Swimming With The Fishes, and has Gone To Davey Jones' Locker. Ugly, who is - sorry, was - an ancistrus, a bristle-nosed catfish - has passed away over the last 24 hours. He was dead in the tank when we got back from London. He was also rather stiff, and rather niffy, almost like he'd started decomposing rapidly, but then, I suppose fish do. In fact, maybe all things do, it's just that fish don't get put in cold storage. Anyway, this prompted me to do a thorough tank-clean, which did turn up quite some gunk. This wasn't what killed him - he was quite old, for a bristle-nosed catfish. He wasn't young when I got him, he was at least a teenager. I imagine a very contented, algae-filled, quietly-chirpy 80 year old man (in fish form) has just passed on after spending a lovely life in a warm tank with lots of algae-covered rocks for him to munch on, with the odd algae wafer or plecostomus tablet chucked in as a treat. He had a good innings.

Tonight, the mood in the tank is sombre. Pete (a Bristol shubunkin) and Edgy (a yellow comet) seem grateful for the freshening of the water (if I could smell Ugly, God knows what the poor lads sitting in water infused with dead, rotting tankmate could detect), and the zip of antifungal, antibacterial and so on has definitely perked them up a bit. However, despite their chemical shots, both seem to be looking, trying to find a mate who's disappeared, wondering where he is, what happened to him. There's a new closeness between Pete and Edgy. Edgy was only recently introduced, and Pete was quite bullish with him when he arrived. Of course, the natural order established itself, and the two of them both know where they stand. Beyond that point, their relationship is friendly and respectful: Pete even seems quite protective of Edgy, now. Tonight, they are swimming together a lot, united in grief, comforting each other for their collective loss, finning gently and reminiscing about their good friend, Ugly.