One Fish, Two Fish

During the school holidays Hubby cleaned out the fish pond. He removed truckloads (well, it seemed like it!) of plant life, scrubbed the pond, filled it with water, added the necessary nutrients and then, as one is supposed to, let the whole thing settle. A few days later he sent the kids and I off to one of the local pet shops to choose the so-called 'experiment' fish. They were the test fish to check that we'd got the water right. We also figured that having two fish die would be slightly less traumatic for the kids than finding a pond full of floating fish!

Pleasingly we got the water just right and our two fish are thriving. We think three frogs have joined the fun (we've seen two at a time but not necessarily the same two each time) and we've just been gifted some tadpoles from the neighbours pond. We know that goldfish eat frog's eggs and tadpoles but we've been led to believe that these taddies are big enough to survive.

We let the kids name the fish - one each in all efforts of fairness. Following in the footsteps of his Dad, and being the Carlton* tragic he is, Offspring #1 was torn between naming his fish Juddy** or Fev***. I couldn't help teasing him and suggested that Juddy had only played one season for Carlton so we couldn't really embrace him just yet whereas Fev was a true Carlton player. He took the bait and named his fish Fev. Offspring #2 has a favourite colour that she points out to all and sundry, wears whenever possible and generally chooses that pencil when she's colouring. She thought long and hard about what to name her fish and then pronounced that HE would be known as... PINK. So we have Fev the Fish and Pink, two lovely gold comets. Now I'm not sure we can get more fish for the pond. Fev will drink too much and make off with their girlfriends and Pink will probably just get beaten up. Oh dear!

*Carlton is a football team in the national Australian Rules league. Hubby is a big fan and has indoctrinated the rest of the household. The kids know all of the team song. I'm so proud.

**Juddy is Chris Judd. A hugely talented player and all-round nice guy who left the WA team (who we don't go for even though we live here) and joined Carlton

***Fev is Brendon Fevola. A hugely talented player and not-especially nice guy who manages to find trouble in the most unlikely places as well as all the likely ones.