What? No Fish!

OK, enough with the fish. I know, I know  but the river I like to wander along doesn’t have so many salmon swimming up it anymore  and that is such a bad thing that if I could, like the mighty Doctor, go back in time I would put back that wee fish in that net  that you can just about see in the picture below…

Well, I might.

But the real thing is what if there were no fish? What would have happened to Jonah when he was tossed over board and was swallowed by the whale! (Do not correct me! I know, scientifically speaking a whale is not a fish but in the story that whale is called a fish and that is good enough for me.) Would Jonah have to be rescued by a giant turtle? I can just imagine that: there he is,with his long wet beard, the wind and waves giving him a right battering and he’s clinging on to the edge of the giant turtle’s shell and God says: “Jonah! What do you think you are doing?”

Jonah says: ‘Clinging on, God, that’s what I’m doing. Why couldn’t you invent some large animal, call it a fish, or a whale if you like, and it could swallow me whole and I could live inside that giant fish and I wouldn’t have to cling on to this poor old turtle.”

To which God would say: “That’s something I’ll think about. Meanwhile, mind you look after that giant turtle. She needs a clean beach without sun beds on it…’

‘Sun!’ says Jonah. ‘What sun? I am in the middle of a storm here…’

Ah, well, leave him there but I think there will be a different kind of Jonah in the story I’m working on. He comes from somewhere the other side of the universe, across the big void and the other side of the Edge.