Goldfish In The Pond

In the newspaper there was an article about people abandoning their pets, now that things appear to be going back to normal. Dogs, cats and goldfish (how can people not even manage to look after goldfish?). They simply chuck their goldfish into a local pond and leave them to disrupt the natural order of things: they are greedy and dirty and take over from the normal fishscape.

Funnily enough just two weeks ago, we saw a small shoal of goldfish (including a silver one) dutifully following a mallard in one of the ponds up at the common. They appeared to be following his orange feet, presumably under the assumption that his relatively big orange flippers were a chief goldfish that they needed to obey and parade behind, if you can parade under water. There are still at least three of them hovering about in the murky gloom, apparently having given up their obeisance. I started to draw them yesterday. The water is very difficult. I will need to complete this one in stages.