In the summer of that year we visited the summer fair of the local branch of BLESMA - the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association.At that time there were still a couple of old soldiers there who had lost limbs in World War One I seem to remember and their prosthetics included the use of old fashioned hooks to replace a hand.
There was a small fairground laid on for visitors as a fund-raising venture and Gill won a prize on one of the stands. She wanted a goldfish. We hadn't banked on this, but she most definitely wanted a goldfish and a comb, screwdriver or a small and tatty plastic toy wasn't going to sway her away from wanting a goldfish.
We arrived home with this small, over-hot and suffocating little fish and it lived for a day in a large glass mixing bowl until we could buy a small plastic tank to put it in. Gillian decided it would be named "Eric the Twink". I've no idea where that came from...
Eric, against all expectation, did not die half an hour after getting him home. He stubbornly held onto life, requiring the purchase of said plastic tank so that Fran could wash out his bowl and make more cup cakes...We grew fond of him and a few friends were found for him. He did then eventually pop his clogs not long after the new friends came... But these grew to need a larger tank and a couple of them, a large goldfsh called Jaws and a shubunkin called Bluey are seen above.
Jaws eventually grew to around 6 inches in length and, exactly as with model train sets, we realised that if we wanted a more scenic environment then we had to shrink the scale somewhat and at Christmas 1981 a 3 feet long tropical fishtank made an appearance.
The fish were much smaller, more colourful, much more varied in shapes and behaviour and ...er... bred like rabbits...But the hours of pleasure (or hypnotism) we got from sitting and staring at the large tank was brilliant.
Large versions of the photos: goldfish and shubunkin, guppy, fish tank
*_*
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