Tag: not being first fish

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Not Being First Fish

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

A wasp drops onto the pond, flails about a bit in an unequal struggle with the surface tension and, GLOMP! A fish snaps it up and disappears.  Then – Splash! Thrash! PWARGH! Wasp floats to the surface, not so lively but still kicking.  Another fish eyes it up.  GLOMP! Then PWARGH!  And back comes the wasp, this time with distinctly critical vital signs.  Fish Number Three approaches, gets a bead on its profile and GLOMP! Fish disappears. I wait.  No regurgitation; this wasp is being recycled. To recycle a wasp, it’s smart to be Third Fish.   Title story from Not Being First Fish by … Continue reading Not Being First Fish

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‘Heels’

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Heels Yesterday, on the way to the fields and anticipating not just an encounter with Donovan the Lonely Horse but also a soaking due to the gathering gloom above, I came across a double decker bus.  Not too unusual you might think, but in this part of the world we’ve only just stopped pointing at cars and describing them as horseless carriages, so the arrival of a bus is quite an event[1], especially when apparently stranded at the end of a lane it should never have been able to get up and only has steps, a field and a river … Continue reading ‘Heels’

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The Hills Are Alive …

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

…with the sound of feline yodelling. In the manner of one’s elderly granny upping sticks in the middle of the night to go shopping, wearing only carpet slippers and a hat she bought for a wedding in 1946 and kept because it would ‘come in’, Pickle is beginning to take leave of whatever senses Persians start out with. This has never been much to write home about as anyone living with a Persian will testify. That blank look, reminiscent of an iDog[1] that just drained its battery, is what Persians do between thoughts, and since thoughts are about as frequent … Continue reading The Hills Are Alive …

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Chips and Hips

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Thought I’d try walking like those women in American crime dramas. You’ve seen them, sweeping down long corridors having important conversations and not looking where they’re going: Hips, Hips, Hips, Hips; like Kate Moss except the dope’s in the evidence bag not back home unconscious on the sofa.  I get as far as Hips #1 and skid on the kitchen lino, scattering a number of cats and sending the dogs into a frenzy of territorial barking. That kind of behaviour being, quite obviously, the signature move of the dangerous intruder. It takes half an hour to calm everyone down and … Continue reading Chips and Hips

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“Lawn Dogs & Budgerigars in the Cress”

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

For us, High Tea was a Highly Mannered ritual to be performed for the purposes of demonstrating one’s capacity to set out the cutlery in the right order and on this one particular occasion we were being visited by some rather puffed up relatives who, at their own home, had a front room into which riff raff like us were never invited, but from whom my parents hoped to cop the odd bob or two when they passed on. When the time came we only got a pair of curtains from the rellies and I buried a cat in one of … Continue reading “Lawn Dogs & Budgerigars in the Cress”

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‘Fundamentals’

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Unattended men were never seen in the underwear department of Messrs Marks and Spencer unless in the company of formidable matrons whose capacity to wither a frisky thought at birth had been practised under their mother’s tutelage.  In fact even a somewhat tottery thought asking vague questions about whether it was tea time yet would have been hard pressed to survive and would most likely have gone home for a sit down with an iced fancy instead. Extract from Fundamentals, one of the several ‘diary dramas’ recounted in Not Being First Fish by P. Spencer Beck. Find on Amazon UK & … Continue reading ‘Fundamentals’

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