The Essex Weather Centre has warned this weekend will see a downpour to rival Noah’s – only without the time to build an ark.

I am probably the only one who is quite pleased about that. The reason? My fish.

When I moved home, I inherited a pond. I was delighted.

I had always fancied lazing in the garden on a summer’s day with the sound of running water lulling my senses along with the gentle buzz of bees.

Ha! That’s all I can say about that. First off, this pond was the size of a small swimming pool. Well, certainly too big for the two resident fish. It also went green if the pump wasn’t run for a day and needed expensive chemicals.

And the waterfall shifted, sending the water off the edge of the pond on to the decking. In winter. When it was icy. Leading to many bad words.

Being the practical type, I found the feed pipe and ran it on to a bit of guttering, which saved the spill and the ice, but looked rubbish.

By this time the pump had to be turned off anyway, because thick ice had formed on the top. Clearly that was a great place for Boris Dog to try to learn skating. He was not good, neither was he good at swimming through ice.

Once the good weather returned, the pipes started leaking and once those leaks had been found, the fish both died of parasites. More chemicals.

And every time the damned hole emptied onto the flower beds, I had to top it up with about 4,000 litres of water, because not only is it huge, it’s stupidly deep. So, I cleared out the mammoth pit, filled it with clean, treated, water and bought new fish – which the heron really, really appreciated.

It was about this time I also learned to have a chance of seeing if the fish are in the pond, or the heron, you need to make sure your UV light is replaced regularly – especially if you have no oxygenating weed because your first fish had been koi, not goldfish at all.

At last, everything seemed to be doing great. The water and the fish were staying in the pond, the pump and the UV filter were working and none of the pipes were leaking significantly.

Recently, I asked a tree surgeon to cut down a couple of overgrown leylandi. He also managed to crack one of the pipes, so I went out to find half a dozen fish slapping around the bottom of an empty pit.

And being on a meter, all I can say is any free pond water is OK by me, so bring on the rain!

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