Fish Walkies and the Black Death.

Apologies for not having been around, I have been busy dying from the local version of the Black Death.  A couple of weekends ago I ventured south to inspect a festival of Llamas, no, Not the religious variety more the four hooved kind! And to purchase an alpaca/silk mix for spinning on behalf of my sister.  This was held at some rat hole too near Seattle, namely Monroe.  I say rathole without fear of contradiction when the best restaurant in town for lunch was, wait for it, Dennys!!!  (For those of you not conversant with our erstwhile colonies, think Little Chef!

Obviously there was an insufficient distance to quarantine the place from the miasmic effluvia of Seattle, too many wogs and queers have the place radiating germs, stray bullets and knives!  Three days later, wipe out! A week in bed and thereafter spectral totterings from room to room, coughing, choking, hacking, wheezing and cursing.  I still haven’t been out of the door and am unlikely to in the near future.

Good thing I have pneumonia shots these days or the local Sisters of the Perpetual Prophet, sorry profit, aka The Sisters of Mercy aka Bellingham Hospital would have had their claws in my bank balance!  (No mercy shown there I assure you!)

As a halloween costume, me in dressing gown puce, cursing and choking was rather splendidly intimidatory.  I was so looking forward to menacing people on the doorstep and giving them the kiss of death literally.  Unfortunately living 4 miles out of the nearest town we had no callers as usual and I had some lovely wrapped lithified dogs turds all ready for the little dears! Shame!

Now then, what nearly did precipitate an untimely demise of my good self was the Fish Walkies story.  An incipient heart attack was only narrowly avoided by the application of large amounts of liquid restorative and a great deal of attention from my three four legged attendant hot water bottles whilst suffering bed rest, which of course they HAD to share.  It went thus, tiring of inane Yank TV, I had put the radio on.  We only get Canadian stations because of the mountains.  CBC1 = radio 4.

Evidently the Vancouver Aquarium had started taking their fish out for walks round the city. Not dead and gasping or properly fried with chips but in tanks on gurneys.  They had built special glass tanks, extra robust to take shocks and had them mounted on trolley things, these tanks were 8′ long or so, put fish in them and taken them for walks as in perambulators.  Not so that people could see the fish but that fish could see other views and not become bored!

This was not a wind up, taxpayers money was actually being used for this exercise!!!!

Now I know I have told you before that there is something very wrong with most Canadians, hypocrisy and neurotic paranoia being the least of their national traits.  But this descends into the realms of sheer lunacy.  They have no homeless shelters or housing to speak of in Vancouver and when the homeless get too embarrassing B.C. ships them off to Alberta, dumps them in the first town and lets them make their own way back! Happens regularly.  So public money can be found for fish perambulators but not homeless shelters?  Kafka had nothing on these people!

I swear, thank God for a manned border.  Should be renamed ‘through the looking glass’ rather than the 49th parallel.  This of course set my recovery back considerably.  An attack of the vapours ensued with a vision of barracudas dressed in Inland Revenue uniforms invading my bedroom in glass prams was upon me, whether dispelled or induced by the brandy forced down my throat by the dogs remains a mystery!

More prosaically, Oz’s jumper is nearly done, half way up second sleeve, with the proviso that he has not turned into an octopus over the last six months that may well be a sufficiency of sleeves.

Author: christinaosborne

Landed on one side safely. View all posts by christinaosborne