“I have something to show you,” I say.
“Is it something nice?”
Damn – He thinks I’ve baked a cake. I should have done – a lemon sponge might
have been some small consolation for what I am about to show him.
“No,” I say as we go out into the garden, “It’s something
sad.”
I indicate the pond.
There, floating, silvery, magnificent and quite, quite dead is our
beloved Chris.
Oh, you might think – a fish. Couldn’t you just have run down to the pet
shop and replaced it? Nobody would have
been any the wiser. So I should tell you
that Chris is a koi carp of such dimensions that we used to have a bit of a
Captain Ahab/Moby Dick thing going on.
“Chris!”
“I’m sorry, son. That
icy spell. He already had an ulcer, so maybe
it’s good he died in his winter sleep.”
“Oh – I remember when he used to swim backwards for food.”
We stand together and share fond memories of happy times
with Chris. It takes about ninety
seconds – he was a fish after all.
“Perran, what shall we do with the body?”
I shall draw a veil over the comments about batter, salt and
vinegar. Safe to say, I think we’ve
out-grown pet funerals. Just as well as
I’ve no cardboard box remotely big enough for a coffin.
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