Freedom From The Mundane

An Early Christmas Miracle

Image: Business Pundit

If I ever wanted the perfectly worse day to follow a Specials gig, Friday achieved it. Instead of being able to skulk away and work quietly on my own work, thereby giving me time to get over my aches, pains and significant hangover, I had to get involved in some major shit. It was simply THE worst kind of day to have after the day/night before, but I got through it, albeit painfully.

The gig itself was awesome. Not as emotionally churning as the first gig in April (well, it was the first time I’d ever had the privilege in 27 years) but it allowed me to appreciate the gig more from a more respectable distance. Instead of spending the night in the mosh pit as I did at the April gig, I kept a slight distance and had all my mates and family around making it a really great occasion. Live, The Specials really do take some beating, and I was delighted the Corn X managed to get their act together with the acoustics for a change.

Yesterday was very relaxing – just the way I wanted it. I got up at a reasonable time and eased into the day, did some reading, made some coffee, bought a paper and put the rabbit out back for the day.

I’ve had the line: “Cleanout the fish tank” on my To Do list for a long time. I’m talking nearly a year and I’ve never gotten round to it. No rush either, because it was in such a state of decay – you can’t even see inside the tank for all the algae and dark water – it was something I would rather do when I had the stomach for it. Yesterday was that day.

The pump, heater and lights had been turned off long ago, so when I lifted the lid and peered in I boaked at the stench. The plants that once existed had turned to slush, and those that lay on the top had grown into clumps of mould. As the water level dropped over the months it had left a sticky, green slime hardened to the inside of the glass, and the water – and what lay underneath it – simply reeked of poison.

I started hauling out the equipment and spent a while giving it a thorough clean. Then the ornaments came out, including the dead plants. I placed the driftwood and lava rocks into a pan and left them to boil for the best part of the day. Unable to use the siphon to get the water out due its turgid thickness, I resorted to a deep ladle to transfer the gunk into a bucket. Eventually I got down to about 1cm of black water and couldn’t get any more out due to the gravel, so I began shoving it all to one side in order to deepen the water at one end. As I did so I saw a fish – a Red Tailed Black Shark no less – lying dead on top of the gravel at the far end.

I wasn’t unsurprised to find something dead in the tank but – bones are common place when you get under the gravel from fish of old – but this one still had all of its colours. I figured it must have been preserved somehow, so I went to get a bag to wrap and bin it. I reached in to retrieve it and the damn thing only started flipping about! It was still alive – very much alive in fact – and so I had to act fast to save it.

Instead of being able to empty the tank fully to give it a deep clean, I now had to change my plan and get it filled up with treated water and cleaned at the same time – and fast if I was to save the fish. It took time, but eventually I got there bucket by bucket, and now it swims graciously on its own in an empty tank – but it has survived the ordeal. As my father said, it deserves the V.C. for having survived so long in an unheated, unaerated and unlit tank. With no food it must have been surviving on the algae itself in the pitch dark, and it had lived like this for the bet part of a year.

I’m off to get some new equipment and décor for the tank today, and then in the next couple of weeks, some new friends for the little soldier. Later on, we’ll see what happens.

The saved fish!