Meet Nubia

NUBIA was one of the best pet fishes I ever had. She was a Borneo Sucker or hillstream loach. These stealth-bomber-style fishies live in shallow pebbly streams where they zip along the shallow aerated water, sticking to rocks as the tumult swirls about them.

Relative to her size, Nubia must have been the fastest-moving most agile swimmer I ever had. The lady at the fish shop was totally exasperated trying to catch her between two nets in an empty tank as she pinged back and forth in great commotion. She looked like a flying ribbon.

Nubia lived in a special cave that I built her by hollowing out the gravel at the front and placing a flat piece of slate over the dip. Here she spent her hours of repose, happily suckered upside down ignoring the world (it takes all sorts). She didn't seem too offended when I picked up the rock to have a good look. She just stayed anchored down. And then whooshed away in a flurry of bubbles.

We had an air filter streaming against the glass at the side, and this was her second favourite place. She was a strong enough swimmer to actually move vertically downwards against the air-and-waterflow.

Loaches are my favourite sort of fish. They skulk about in the shadowiest, most secluded zones of the so-called community tank, eschewing the company of other fish, preferring to dart about very quickly at selected opportunities. They don't eat fishfood, but feed instead on algae on the glass, which means you should never place one in a brand-new tank or it'll starve.

It took me a while to realize that Nubia's most striking characteristic was one I'd previously attributed to a trick of the light. Sometimes she seemed to go light and then dark as if a shadow were passing overhead. Then I realized she was actually changing colour, more according to mood (so I assumed) than anything else.

How amazing is that.

So there we have it. The Borneo Sucker: the most amazing fish known to aquarium-kind!

Male Sewellia lineolata and Gastromyzon ctenocephalus having a scuffle on a cobble (as you do). Well as gripping viewing goes it beats Larkrise to Candleford hands down:~

Kipper Addiction

I HAVE JUST REALIZED I AM ADDICTED TO KIPPERS... haddock, mackerel... smoked fish of all kinds. this is terrible! What am I going to to?!

Like a clucking junkie this morning I trawled the supermarket in desperation along the chilled meats isles. Finally I found smoked mackerel with peppers all over it (coloured and black, yes you can even get chili-peppered mackerel these days)... my eye drifted along to haddock and then "kippers". There is no such fish swimming in the sea as a "kipper". It just means smoked herring. Tescos yesterday wanted £3 for 200g ie £15 a kg. Morrisons own were 78p for 200g ie £3.90 per kg or nearly a quarter of the price.

I took them home gleefully and indulged in my habit with toast, behind closed doors.

What am I going to tell Narcotics Anonymous? Hi I'm an addict and I'm addicted to heroin, crack (as was, gave that up January 1 2009), drink, the odd Valium and KIPPERS! Ukh. But they're so moreish....


NAOMI CAMPBELL was in a crimes against humanity court today. Hurrah! I thought. Finally the beautiful monster is getting nailed for her offences to fashion, music, novel-writing and film. But no, it was some silly case that she would inevitably answer no to, because no-one will admit in front of the taxman to a potentially multimillion pound gift, that the President of Liberia gave her a whacking great blood diamond.

She says no (quelle surprise!) But she did wake up in the middle of the night at the Presidential Villa in South Africa with two mysterious men standing over her (she didn't lock her door, what a tart!) who handed her a "bag of dirty stones".

Hmmm...

I bet she gets more in free gifts off her millionaire boyfriends than she ever earns on the catwalk or in front of a lens. I heard she only makes £2 million a year, which sounds fine and dandy till you realize her agency takes a whacking cut, then the tax man ~ 50%! ~ which can't leave more than about £700,000 a year. And how are you meant to live and buy a decent house on that!!

Those horrible "real housewives of New Jersey" were boasting of the value of their homes. Well one was. And I translated dollars to pounds and thought, hang on a minute one of my old houses was worth that.

Yes a standard £500,000 London home, housing the poor and destitute!

Illustrated: kippers, Naomi Campbell ~ mobile-phone lobbing queen of mean, Millennium Star diamond ~ 203-carat D-flawless!


Naomi Campbell talks cocaine addiction with Oprah Winfrey



Vauxhall Corsa: the new supermodel 1992 commercial
Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington et al... and a car

Fishing Cormorants

FEATHERY FRIDAY (ON SATURDAY)...

IN CHINA and Japan, man and bird have come together for "mutual" benefit... traditional fishermen keep cormorants on their boats. These sharp-eyed birds scan the waters for fish, soon to plunge in, grab a writhing carp or whatever and obediently spit it on to the old man's boat.

What this popular commercial for the HSBC bank (formerly Midland Bank; HSBC stands for Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of CHINA) doesn't tell you is that the birds' throats are kindly bound with metal twine to stop them SWALLOWING their fishycatch ~ the feathery swines!