WHEN our first three kids were little, we were dragged down the pet shop to buy them a goldfish each. Max, the fourth born, was only a baby at the time so he didn’t get one.

One by one, his brothers and sister pointed into a tank teeming with hundreds of fish and expected the pet shop owner to catch exactly the right one in a net the size of a tea-strainer.

It was the aquatic equivalent of trying to spot a needle in a haystack and I remember his sighs getting deeper and deeper as he kept having to chuck fish back into the tank and try again…and again…and again.

In the end, Jack ended up with a black, boggly-eyed chap called Bow while his brother, Chris, had a more traditional goldfish called Arrow. Their sister, Hannah, weighed in as the proud owner of a whitish fish named Emma.

They were kept in a tank in the hall of our house but the novelty soon wore off and, for one reason or another, Bow, Arrow and Emma didn’t live to see old age.

The years have swum by in a blur since then but we’ve just taken a trip back in time after getting a new garden pond with a little waterfall.

As soon as the pond was finished, the “kids” – now aged 26, 25, 23 and 20 – were keen to get some fish.

This time, we went to a garden centre where there was an even bigger tank, with even more fish. One by one, the kids pointed out the fish they wanted and the exasperated bloke in charge had to try to net the right one.

Eventually, Christopher named his fish “Dagon” after an ancient fish-god. Jack, who is studying literature, opted to name his after the 19th century poet “Gerard Manley Hopkins”. Hannah, whose passion in life is food, simply plumped for “Chips”. Max is still working on a name for his.

But it didn’t end there because, these days, we have an extended family. Hannah’s boyfriend, Jamie, was allowed to choose a fish and called it Moby. Christopher’s girlfriend, Lisa, was next up and called hers Ruby, in honour of her Gran.

Naturally, we couldn’t leave out our baby grand-daughter, Chloe, so she had a fish chosen for her by her mum and dad. It’s called Ponyo, which is apparently the Japanese version of The Little Mermaid.

That left me and my wife and, after exhaustive consideration, the woman I married has named her fish “Corners”. Why? Because it kept swimming into the corners of the plastic bag on the way home from the garden centre. Ingenious.

Determined to be more ambitious than her, I put out a plea for fish names on social media and a shoal of suggestions came flooding in.

I was definitely tempted by “Huckleberry Finn”, proposed by David Cadman. But then Barry Davis nearly had me hooked with “Fishy McFish Face”. And Jenny Peat was nothing less than inspired when she wrote: “You’ve got the fish, you’ve got Chips, how about Mushy Pete?”

But, in the end, I’m proud to declare that the winning suggestion came from Saul Kennedy, of Newton Aycliffe.

Yes, my goldfish, living happily in our new garden pond, is called “James Pond – Bubble-O-7”.

Call me childish, but that’s o-fish-al.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

TEACHER Emma Johnson, a graduate of Durham University, got in touch to tell me about a geography lesson in her Year 2 class.

The pupils had been looking at comparisons between Scotland and Brazil because the Rio Olympics were coming up. They looked at key landmarks such as castles, mountains and rivers and discussed the food and language of both countries.

At the end of the session, Emma asked the children to write one thing that they had found out and hadn't known before on to a Post-it note and stick it on the door as they left for lunch.

It wasn't till the end of the day that she got chance to read what the children had written and burst out laughing when she saw that one included: "Scottish people speak garlic."

THANK you also to Sue Campbell, of Gainford, for letting me know about her three-year-old grandson Mal.

Mal had enjoyed a piece of his Grandma’s Yorkshire parkin for dessert after lunch and, in the style of Oliver Twist, asked his Mummy: “Can I please have some more?”

“Well, how about having something that isn’t cake?” suggested his Mummy.

Mal considered this for a moment and then replied: “Actually, I’d like something that IS cake.”