Simile Of The Congruous Fish

Oh woman! Why are you flip-flapping like a fish on a dock? Kick yourself back to the water, throw yourself to the flow of it. Have you forgotten so much, with just this slight distraction?

In the back of the car, in the midst of this load of transported objects, a stack of pans strike a rhythm with every bump of the lane. In my head incessant things are shuffled round but will not make the shape of a tidy cottage. The car windows are wound down and brambles flick in. Lurch, clang, whip, we go up the rough old lane. It’s only moving from here to there, so why obsess over it: kick yourself back to the water, woman, quit flitting, you know you can swim.

‘This is an adventure,’ I observe, after a pause for consideration.

Another favourite quote of mine, so favourite I remember the source: GK Chesterton, he says, ‘An adventure is an inconvenience, rightly considered.’

At Number Three, almost our new home, the electric oven is wired in. I make poached eggs for supper. We struggle, in good humour, with plastic forks. I will bring cutlery next. We will play with this new fangled electric cookery, and when the chimneys are swept, we will play with the old Rayburn and the cast iron casserole pot. Convenient things need not remove adventure. Nor need inconvenient things smother it. It is consideration that underlies the joy. I get to choose my view.

Curious, I surmise, to begin with this simile of a fish, flip-flapping on the dock, when the change of view is life or death to it.

‘Oh, you so drama!’ Smile at myself: then think on it. The humour keeps, not so incongruous.