People are always going on about how pets make children responsible and mature. Previously I had thought that pets were awful and in times of conflict you ended up eating them or worse, they went wild and ate you.

My earliest memory of any pet type thing was in Pakistan when I was little. Our uncles brought lots of little chickens from a farm which we thought, of course, were for us to play with. We befriended a particularly cute one and gave it an original name like Chicky or something and the next day my aunt served him up as dinner. My, how we bawled.

After that we decided to turn vegetarian. But then someone told us something really yukky, like we'd have to eat vegetables so we changed our minds.

The concept of pets isn't really very strong in Pakistan. Or in this country among Asians either. My friend has written a book about a little Asian girl and her hamster because our kids don't know about such things. But as I pointed out: when you've got lots of brothers and sisters and cousins to play with and maybe a baby brother or sister to look after you don't really feel as if you're missing out on the responsibility stuff.

Most Pakistanis are, however, baffled by the British obsession with dogs, and whoever has a dog for defence purposes gives him an English name like John.

Birds are popular, however, (not just chickens) and lots of people have aviaries in their gardens.

The problem with pets is that they are high maintenance so whenever we are looking for pets we end up with a goldfish called Fishy and we watch it go round the bowl for a few months and them it pops its clogs, usually due to overfeeding. Well, if you can't sprinkle some food in its bowl, how else do you interact?

Pets are so expensive. That's another good thing about goldfish. They are usually free at the Mela. And their food is cheap too, though when you bring them home afterwards you never have any at home and all the shops are shut so you crumble some bread and give them that, worried that you'll come down in the morning and they'll be floating on top of the water.

You cannot feed your pets your junk, it makes them ill and then you have to fork for astronomical vet's fees. Vaccinations don't come cheap either and then cleaning out the cages, bowls, baskets is a job that no-one likes.

Pets take a lot of effort. But they can teach young children too. Toddler is at the age when he really, really wants a pet and keeps telling everyone that he has a cat. Unfortunately, he is referring to the huge tabby who slouches into our garden and terrorises the weeds.

In the end we went round to the pet shop and saw some cute bunny rabbits who looked harmless and adorable with their fluffy Teletubby-like charm. The man in the shop told us about the cost, the hutch, the food, the vaccinations, the cleaning, and my mother looked at the gigantic fish aquarium and said: "I've got a brilliant idea, how about a lovely goldfish?"

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.