My Dad’s A Goldfish – at last, a new post

I apologise to Goldfish followers for the long gap since my last post. I hope more regular postings will now follow this one as I continue with his story from where I left off. I have to admit, it has been more difficult than I expected to keep writing although I can’t really explain why. I have also been picking up writing work again here and there with some magazine features and a local history book coming out next month.
I think I have already said I kept a diary, so it is not difficult to pick up where I left off in terms of knowing the sequence of events. Although, looking through entries for those early weeks after I moved in, I find I’d forgotten just how desperately tired I was much of the time. I also struggled to accept that, for the time being, my writing career was stopped. One day in March 2014 I wrote: “Achieved nothing today. Book sales are slipping and I need to do some promotions but when? No time. Have written nothing for weeks. No magazine features, no poems, no writing full stop. It would be fine if I accepted that for the time being (and it’s not as if it’s going to be for years) I did nothing but take care of the Goldfish – but it’s so hard to totally turn my back on my own life.”
At the same time the Goldfish and I had a lot of fun the evening he discovered a new amusement – one which should keep me fit. He had been to the loo and on the way back suddenly turned round and sat on the seat of his walker. I don’t know if he confused it with his wheelchair or if he was simply too tired to walk any further. There was no budging him so I pulled the walker, with him enthroned upon it, along the hallway and back into the living room. “Nice,” he said, with a big grin on his face. I spent the next hour (well, maybe 15 minutes but it FELT like an hour) pushing and pulling the walker from the living room, through the hall, turn at the bathroom door and back again.
The Goldfish thought this was great fun. I must have looked a sight – red-faced, sweat pouring off me and exhausted – by the time I convinced him it was enough for one night. He happily agreed to a nightcap and we shared a bag of posh crisps. Maybe I did achieve something that day, after all. What’s not to be satisfied about a happy Goldfish?