Up The Farway Tree

Tom the Goldfish (1984-2010)

My goldfish died today at the grand old age of 26! I got him at the pet shop when I was 5 years old after failing to win a goldfish at the Galaday that year. He was called Tom - I had another fish called Tim (I was very original with names ;-)) Mum has been caring for him in his latter years as I left him at home when I went to uni thinking he wouldn't be around for much longer. How wrong was I! Over the years he lost all his gold colour and was a pale silvery white and to be honest quite freaky looking. He was a tough wee thing though - there was one time I came home from school and found the shelf had fallen off my wall and the two fish tanks were lying upside down on the carpet. The other fish was lying dead but we couldn't find Tom. I was rather upset and mum came to try and help me look. After much searching we eventually found him under the wardrobe, presumed dead, but when I went to lift him out he flipped over! I rushed to the bathroom and put him into a sink full of water where he lay on his side rather lifeless. Clearly I always wanted to be a doctor because for some reason I thought it was a good idea to get a syringe and inject lots of air into the water to try and increase the oxygen content (fish do take oxygen from the water). Well it worked! A few minutes later and Tom was swimming round the sink quite the thing. It was something of a miracle as we were looking for him for at least half an hour (and I don't even know at what point the tanks fell down). I used to keep the tank in the bathroom after that - it was relaxing watching him in the bath. Visitors did complain that he was staring at them on the toilet though...

Actually we thought for a while he was blind as he didn't seem to notice food in the tank - probably cataracts and I think he may have been demented too ;-) I think 26 years is mighty impressive but he must have been rather bored looking at the same four walls for all that time. I do hope they are right about the 3 second memory. Dad felt too guilty to flush the wee guy so he is now buried in the garden beside our old dog Keisha.
I felt the wee guy was owed at least a blog entry in his memory, so goodbye wee Tom!