Eat more fish, the doctor told me.
Bad skin and your hair loss: more
fish.
Depression and high blood
pressure: more fish.
Putting on weight and feeling
sluggish: more fish.
I asked her if she was on
commission. She just laughed. I even asked her if she was a proper doctor at
all. That wasn’t so funny, apparently.
“More fish,” she said. “It’s full
of Omega 3s and oils and low in fat and has far fewer side effects than pills. Much
better for you, especially at your age. So try more fish, then come back if you
don’t feel better. But you will, you will, if you eat more fish.”
I’ve never really eaten fish,
though, so what do I do? I head to the nearest fish shop and I point and I pay.
I don’t know why I bought a
halibut. I’ve heard the name, of course. And it’s a fun word to say – halibut,
halibut, halibut.
It was looking at me, so I
decided to take it home. It was looking at me with one good eye; winking at me, eyebrow raised. How could I
resist?
But then what? I mean, I picked
it because it was cheeky. How was I supposed to cook it?
I used that Google thing our
Stacey showed me and looked up ‘halibut’.
Wikipedia recommended it steamed and
served in black bean sauce. Sounded like a lot of work to me for a fish. But
before it told me that, it told me that it was a ‘right eye flounder’. That’s
even more fun to say.
I picked it up and turned it
over, aware of the slimy texture in my fingers. Sure enough, both eyes were on
one side. One eye – the one with the cocky eyebrow – looked kind of normal. The
other was smaller and squinted, as though the lights were too bright. It looked
lobsided.
Don’t ask me why I carried it
through to the powder room. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
If the lights in the kitchen were
too bright, the lights in here were worse, that was one reason why I so rarely
came in here. But, hey, it’s just a fish.
Called Derek.
I opened the door on the bathroom
cabinet and then I held Derek up at arm’s length. I had a vague memory of
Stanley Baxter.
Or Dick Emery.
I held Derek up and aligned him with
the mirror.
And there he was, gazing back at
me with two good eyes. His eyebrows were raised in greeting, and his mouth
seemed to be curved into a sardonic smile.
Harry Worth, that was it.
I didn’t quite know what to do
with Derek after that. I’d named him and now I felt I’d met him. He’d smiled at
me. How could I cook him now?
So, I took him back to the
kitchen, washed my hands, then fetched my wife’s ‘sewing and notions’ basket.
She’d always hated it when I called
it that.
I found a square of green felt and
I laid Derek down on it. It offset the dark colour of his upper side very
nicely. And then, with some fragments of lace, and a handful of sequins, I
prettied him up. He looked a picture by the time I’d finished.
I don’t know about my hair or my
weight, but I felt really quite cheered up by the time I’d finished.
Maybe I’ll take him to the doctor
tomorrow, and show her. If she likes fish as much as she says, she’ll love
Derek.
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