A Fishy Tale

By Colin Seager

It was early January. I’d just returned home from one of my favourite walks off the main paths in the local Nature Reserve. There I could always find a spot to be on my own, away from the distracting tinnitus of modern life. That day I’d stopped for ten minutes at the place where, about four months earlier, I’d been fascinated by the antics of a queen bumblebee as she searched meticulously for a suitable site for winter hibernation.

Close by was one of the areas that would soon become carpeted by the buttercup-yellow of the lesser celandine as it justified its ancient name of spring’s messenger. Despite being a quiet time, it was worth being in the exhilarating company of the natural world. Even if then it was confined to watching a blackbird foraging for titbits. There tranquillity reigned, a place to absorb the sound of silence. When I opened the door to Graham Balding, I felt good.

I’d been home no more than ten minutes or so and there he was, inviting me to look at his magnificent offering from Love Fish Direct, all at market-beating prices. A service fit for the pickiest pescatarian. He could also supply to order mouth-watering fish pies. Everything looked good and professional; him, his van, and the presentation of the products. Perhaps If I hadn’t liked fish none of it would have happened. Maybe, I wouldn’t have been tempted, but when he showed me those delectable cuts of hake and turbot, I was sold. And, indeed, I felt good.

I liked him. We got on well and little by little I learned more about him, and on about his fifth visit when he’d finished the delivery he asked if he could use the loo. Of course, I said, help yourself. A few minutes earlier I’d made a pot of coffee and invited him to join me. He said he could take five. That’s how it started.

Turned out that he’d had an excessively bad run. His wife and their five-year-old daughter had been killed by a hit and run car that the police were never able to trace. He showed me the photograph of them that he always kept with him. The girl was a smiling little beauty with a mop of red hair, just like her father. That had happened nearly six years ago, and slowly he had slithered to the bottom. He couldn’t work, had his home repossessed and eventually finished up living rough.

Until early one morning Lady Luck had appeared in the form of a Dickie Horrobin, who was staggering home from a boozy night out when he tripped over feet that protruded from a doorway and discovered that they belonged to an old mucker, Graham (Ginger) Balding. It wasn’t long after that chance encounter that Ginger was helped back onto his feet. Horrobin, a successful entrepreneur, found him a flat, and financed the start up of Love Fish Direct. By the deal they made, after a year’s trading Ginger had to start repaying those initial costs.

There we were in my living room: coffee finished, the five minutes became thirty, by which time I knew the details of Ginger’s plans to create a national franchise. It seemed like a viable proposition. I liked the fish and the idea, and the chance to help someone worth supporting. All that was needed was for me to match his enthusiasm and my love of the products with hard cash.

The trouble is, at least from Ginger’s point of view, I may have looked like a soft touch who’s away with the birds and the bees, and sometimes the fairies, but there are no flies on me. Turned out, that there never was a wife and beautiful titian-haired daughter, or a Dickie Horrobin for that matter. I’m not fussed, there’s another place I can get fresh fish. His case comes up in May.