Have you Ever Seen a Fish Die&;#063;

I famously don't get on with my mother very well, and I think she
knows it. I was at home earlier, in one of my nostalgic moods, and I
had been listening to some music and waiting for my girlfriend to text
me. I heard a shout from downstairs, so I paused my music and went down
to the living room. My mother was lying on the sofa eating crisps and
watching the tennis, so I asked her whether she had called me. She
replied in the affirmative. I sat down in the chair accross the room
from the window and the television, next to the hi-fi and the fish. She
asked me to tell my father (who was out at a parent's evening [he's a
teacher, as is my mother]), to get a separate 'phone line for the
internet, because he never listens to her. I became bored with this
topic after a while, and looked at the fish. I asked her whether she
had ever seen a fish die. She looked puzzled, but she soon responded,
with a rather long anecdote about when she was a nurse, half her life
ago. But, the answer boiled down to "no, I suppose". I started babbling
about how I would write a book about how fish are suicidal, then she
suggested that my recent reading of the excellently twisted 'The Wasp
Factory' had somehow given me ideas about harming animals. I said that
she knew I would never do anything like that, as she knows how
unimpresionable I am. She then droned on about how sensitive I was, but
I knew she was talking about herself and her past regrets. She then
realised she wasn't receiving my full attention, and admitted that she
was rambling on and reiterating over and over, so she stopped and
quoted from a poem from this guy I'd never heard of. She then duly went
and fetched this poem from a book she owned, and made me read it. When
she went to answer the 'phone, I must admit I had to smile, as the poem
was rather entertaining. She then tried to press me into showing her
some of my poems, but I retreated to my room.
That was the first real conversation I had had with my mother for at
least a year and a half.
True Story.