No, I haven't had a baby: do you really think I'd be blogging if I'd just had a baby? Honestly.
There are many reasons for my absence: I went travelling in Australia, worked at a summer camp for two months, travelled America, and after a brief month at home, I left for university.
Something that I once enjoyed so much felt like a chore. Instead of working on projects I'd already created (such as this one), I ignored them and began starting new ones. Mainly as a form of procrastination, but also because I'm an ambitious fool upon occasion. I often think that I can manage every task I set for myself all at once, but here we are, many months later, and we can all plainly see that is not the case.
I'd forgotten how it felt to just write whatever I wanted, just for the sake of it, or for my own amusement. I manage to tweet multiple times a day, and if you put all my tweets together you could probably form a small book, so I'm sure I can manage a blog post once in a while.
So let's begin the new year, 2016, with a story. The Story of the Frozen Fish. (RIP Nemo).
This story really began when I was around seven or eight years old, and I had the great idea of wanting a pet fish for my birthday. I couldn't wait - mum and dad had agreed to let me have two. We'd picked out the tank, bought the gravel and food, and I'd started thinking of names. I imagine I was the seven year old equivalent of a new parent; I think I even got the 'Big Book of Baby Names' out at one point.
I'd settled on Rosie and Jim (I was a big fan of the show at the time, come on, I was seven), but, I was young, naive, and easily manipulated - my older sister told me that those were LAME names, and why not call them Nemo and Dory? Well Bryony, they're my fish, not yours, besides, Nemo and Dory are UNORIGINAL names, everyone calls their fish Nemo.
So, I ended up naming them... Nemo and Dory.
She'd made me feel uncool, okay?
I was still a bundle of excitement all the way to the aquarium-shop-place within our local garden centre. I picked Nemo and Dory out (RIP to Rosie and Jim, the fish that would have been...), and we took them home. I loved them.
For the duration of five minutes.
No-one told me just how BORING fish were as pets! Bet my parents were loving it: cheap present, thrilled child, when they secretly knew, all along, just how bored I would become when I realised what having a pet fish actually meant. It actually meant a fish just swam around in a tank on your sideboard for the next ten years. What a farce.
And as any seven year old would do, I gave up on my new found love for my pet fish, and left them to my parents. My dad to be precise, and he would care for Nemo and Dory for the next four years.
Apart from a brief episode where the neighbour nearly killed them both by overfeeding (we went away for the weekend and came back to find the tank full of fish food. He'd given one handful a day rather than a pinch, we could barely see the buggers through the murky water!), Nemo and Dory seemed the epitome of health. They could have been on the front cover of a fish magazine or something.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, Dory took a turn for the worst, and died of a heart attack. At least, that's what I tell people. I was eleven, and after seeing a red thing coming out of her fishy-chest, I just assumed that's what happened. There was no post-mortem, so I guess we'll never know. RIP Dory.
Well, we just assume that the one who died first was Dory. They were both the same breed of Goldfish and looked identical, so who knows... Who knows?
Understandably, Nemo pined for a while. Wouldn't eat. Well, that's what my mum says. I just noticed that he got bigger and bigger, now that he had the whole tank to himself. And, y'know, now that he got to eat Dory's portions as well. My father was never good at portion control when it came to the fish.
He outgrew the small blue plastic tank that I received so excitedly on my seventh birthday, and got a fancy glass one instead. Jeez, your best fish friend dies and you get a new house, talk about compensation.
And life went on as normal. At least, for the fish. A lot of stuff happened to us humans, but, you know, that's not why you're here, reading this.
That is, until, approximately two years ago, when Nemo developed... a problem. No, not drugs, and he wasn't swimming in vodka (although I don't like to think of what could have happened to him at some of the house parties over the years). He developed, ur, a tail. Made out of poo.
I'd say you'd need to see it to believe it, but trust me: no-one wants to see that.
It became a bit of an attraction for visitors to our house. "Welcome, please come in, here's the kitchen. Oh, there's the fish. That thing? Oh, it's his poo, trailing out behind him."
We did try to help him. I would knock it off with a spoon. Come to think of it, it's a bit gross that we washed it and reused it afterwards. Ew.
We even stopped feeding him for a while; he was quite clearly backed up for all to see. It seemed to work at first, but after the first bit of food he consumed it suddenly reappeared. It was like some sort of really gross magic trick.
But he survived. His poo tail just became a part of him. We had a constipated fish, and we lived with it.
And that brings me up to present day, and to the focal point of the story. Of how our fish, Nemo, became frozen.
It was the 3rd of January, and my parents had been away for New Years. I hadn't seen them in about five days, and whilst they'd been away, I'd been feeding the fish. He'd seemed fine, nothing wrong, eager to be fed. And I'll be honest, I didn't often spend time with him. Unless you're really into fish, who actually spends time with a pet fish? He can't tell me what's up, he can't wag his tail or purr to let me know how he's feeling. So, I went about my business.
I came home from work to greet my parents in the kitchen, who were stood around a saucepan full of water, with my dad swirling his hand around inside it. They informed me the fish was dying, but dad was trying to save him.
My dad was trying to save him.
I mean, that's pet-fish dedication right there. Nemo was (theoretically) the only other male in the house. I guess that's why my dad bonded with him.
(Okay, is it weird that my dad bonded with a fish? Maybe a little.)
So I'm stood there, feeling bad for the poor guy (the fish, but also for my dad), but also with a sense of bemusement. It was the first time I'd seen my parents in 2016, and they were trying to resuscitate the family fish. Odd, sad and amusing all at once.
I knew he wouldn't make it - it was his time. The poor guy had had constipation for two years for God's sake, that's gonna take it's toll! My dad clung on to him for a little longer than the rest of us, but in the end accepted defeat. Not every fish can be saved.
Here's where the freezing part comes in.
My mum has this thing where she, erm, freezes the family pets before burial. I guess that's the best way to put it.
When my pet hamster, Dizzy, died a few years ago, she froze her. She'd died on her way to the food bowl, like a stop-motion picture. It was late at night, too late to bury her, so my mum popped her in a box and into the freezer, ready for a suitable burial the following day.
It wasn't until the next morning and we were listening to the radio that I had my doubt. They were speaking about hamsters, and how they could hibernate really randomly and in odd places. Then I thought, "what if she wasn't dead? what if she was just hibernating?". My mum very quickly put that thought to bed by saying "well if she wasn't dead then, she is now. Frozen to death." Thanks, mum.
So, Dizzy - frozen, and buried.
Now it was Nemo's turn.
They planned to bury him in a pot, and plant some nice flowers over the top of him. We give our pets a good send off in the Buller household. (Although, I have foreseen an issue with this: what if my mum forgets and empties the pot? She's going to get a grim surprise.)
My mum put him in the freezer, so they could buy the flowers and find a nice pot. And they buried him, earlier today. Mum retrieved him from the outside freezer, and he was in a little silver container, the kind you get Chinese food in. He looked like this:
And that was that. Nemo was dead and buried.
My friend Emily asked why we didn't just flush him. We are very sentimental people so it seems, but yes - that would have been bloody easier, wouldn't it?
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