Fish

Flash fiction, with a preamble, foreword, a postscript and another postscript with another story

Preamble

This article has been published here as a contribution to the Soaring Twenties (STSC) Symposium. This month’s theme is “leisure” .The STSC is a group of creatives who write, paint, versify and experiment their way through life. Join us!

Foreword

This is a piece I wrote during a flash fiction course several years ago. It’s exactly 90 words long.

Fish

A drawing of a fish, by Terry Freedman

I'd often seen her around the office. "Deirdre. Accounts.", said a colleague once when he caught me glancing at her. That helped a lot. I knew that the people in that section were sticklers for accuracy.

I spent two weeks creating the most beautiful, elegant, efficient spreadsheet for personal budgeting ever seen. It had sections for anything you could think of. And it was incapable of making a mistake. I emailed it to her.

We're married now. Just goes to show: anyone can fish if they have the right bait!

Postscript

I know this doesn’t sound like it has much to do with ‘leisure’, but I like designing spreadsheets, so it does!

In the past I’ve discovered that clients don’t actually like it when I bolt down the spreadsheet, so I started to introduce small ‘fudge factor’ options they could use to make a few changes. These days I would be tempted to introduce buttons and other controls they could use to change the display, while leaving the real numbers untouched underneath. Surely the semblance of control is, in these circumstances, even better than having control?

Another postscript with a story

The fish story was partly inspired by a Mulla Nasrudin tale. Word travels around the country that the king has sent out his messengers to find a really poor and humble man who could act as his courtier, so Nasrudin starts to dress in fishermen’s clothes and generally looks impoverished. The courtiers discover him, present him to the king, and the king, suitably impressed, appoints him.

The next time a friend of Nasrudin sees him, Nasrudin is wearing the finest raiment.

“What happened to the fisherman’s outfit”, the friend asks.

Nasrudin replies, “Why dress as a fisherman when the fish has been caught?”