"As a treat my Nan would always take me and my brother to the fair in Porthcawl. I'd collect my Dad's coppers and spare change between each trip so I could have at least ten goes at winning a goldfish.
The first goldfish I won was George when I was six and my brother was three. My brother had twice as many turns as me to land the hoop on the target, but he failed every time. So his goldfish, Billy, was bought for him.
I remember it being a scorcher of a day because my legs kept sticking to the plastic seats on the bus. This was probably the reason that poor Billy didn't make the journey home or had fallen asleep, as my Nan put it.
Being much older and wiser than my little brother, I told him in his ear that Nan was fibbing, and that Billy would have to be flushed down the toilet as soon as we got home because he was dead and would start to smell. My brother was devastated, so devastated in fact that we went straight to the local pet shop to pick up another Billy.
But this Billy was the goldfish equivalent of Jaws. I told my Nan that it wouldn't be fair if she let my brother pick that one because there'd be no room left in the bowl for George. But my brother got what he wanted and the old Billy was long forgotten. That is until the next morning when a new wouldn't wake up for his breakfast. Nobody had seen what had happened and we'll never know for sure, but we both came to our own conclusions when we saw that a bit of George's fin was missing and he was now swimming at a bit of an angle.
After a few, I told you so's, I said that George wouldn't mind if we shared him. So we did until the following week when we had to flush him too."
