If you are easily disturbed, please look away now

Yet another of the Eldest Latte's pet fish has died.

That makes four out of five fish who have stopped swimming forwards in circles, and instead abandoned themselves to the current from the electric filter, careering eerily around the tank backwards before disappearing completely.

I now know more than I ever wished to know about the cannabalistic tendencies of seemingly innocent pet fish.

Mr Coffee suggests that we abandon all pretence and rename the fish tank The Death Pool.

I am not good with death. If Mr Coffee were ever to pack his suitcase and leave the country, I know where my spending priorities would lie. I would happily forgo food, wine and clothes for my children in order to employ a man to come and check my lawn for dead frogs and the bottom halves of mice (the neighbours' cats seem to secrete the heads elsewhere) before I venture out to hang my laundry up to dry.

Luckily Mr Coffee's handy asthma has put paid to any larger and more alarmingly mortal pets, much to the misery of the Little Lattes, who often try to hatch a plan to send Daddy to live with The Grandmother so that they can have a cat.

"We will visit you at Christmas," they tell him comfortingly, even though The Grandmother lives just down the road.

It seems that neither children nor fish have any regard for their nearest and dearest at all.