The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3402 by Angharad Copyright© 2023 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I wasn't as good with plants but I seemed to know many of the common ones and some of the less common too. "Charlotte, what's this? " "Hey, Charlotte, what was that lbj that flew past us?" "'lbj' is birder slang for little brown job, basically, it means they didn't get a good look at it, hear its song or have a clue of its species. I'd call out an answer, usually it was warbler or something similar, especially the female birds were more difficult. But in those days I was red hot on identification, of birds, butterflies, some day flying moths and loads of insects. There were more of them in those days, now there seems very few. We have lost 60% of bird species, and 70% or more of insect species, mainly through loss of habitat but also toxic chemicals and pesticides, many of which are unnecessary.

The bumblebees I knew as Charlotte, have a couple of new species, like tree bumble bees, and we have a relatively new solitary bee called the ivy bee. It's been here for about 20 years and as its name suggests, it feeds on ivy flowers, coming out at the end of August when most of the competition is dying off. It is about the size of a hive bee and has quite distinct stripes on its abdomen, plus two small orange-brown tufts of hairs just below the wings at the beginning of its abdomen.

With climate change, some species are going to lose out and some are going to take advantage of it, which is largely how evolution works, the more adaptable will have more offspring and squeeze the less adaptable out. Sometimes it takes millions of years and others it just takes a few years, things can move that quickly.

I was just doing yet another load of washing, it's like a Chinese laundry some days with no Chinamen in sight. I suppose eight or more kids and several adults tend to cause situations like that and I do like clean bedding. The girls usually help and their pocket money is dependent upon it. They get a basic amount which Simon adds extra for how much help they've been. He asks me and I tell him or leave a note if I'm out. He then transfers money into their accounts for the month. I won't say how much because people might say they get too much. As the older girls buy their own clothes, it isn't as much as it sounds. It seems to work though, and they suffer if they make a bad purchase. We still have tantrums when one or other of the adults, usually Simon or me, objects: "You are not going out like that," being the most common phrase that lends itself to tantrums, sulks, pouts and slammed doors.

I wasn't fortunate enough to have that problem very often with my own parents but I did get it from my dad when he thought I looked too feminine for his comfort and of course it happened a couple of times when I was wearing the girl's school uniform during the Lady Macbeth episodes. Usually it was for too much makeup, which Siân and I got round by doing it after I had left home, like shortening our skirts by rolling the top over. We used to walk to school giggling at our subterfuge, but everyone knew what we were doing because they were all doing it themselves, the girls that is. At one point the girl's headmistress rang my mother to say I was giving the wrong impression of the school; acting and dressing like a floozie. Thankfully, my mother dealt with it and had a word with Siân's mum. Because they asked us reasonably, our flooziness declined and we became sedate schoolgirls again.

It sounds as if I was always dressed as a girl; it wasn't like that, for school it was a month or so while I did the play, a few odd occasions besides and a few occasions when Siân and I did it for a laugh, and I changed at her house and we went to a disco one night and another we went shopping. It was always risky but we were young and invincible. Of course there were times when I was mistaken as a girl when in supposed boy mode, the flooding of my friend's house when I went to help but because I had borrowed a pair of wellies from Siân, they thought I was a girl, well Mr and Mrs Absolom did. When I discovered that old man lying in his own front garden. I was wearing those dungarees my father got for me. I don't think he ever knew they were girl's ones.

Oh well, everybody must have tales of embarrassment from their youth. If you can remember the time I worked in the shop, Galbraith thought I was a girl and treated me as such, he was actually alright, I suppose, he offered me work in my holidays from uni, and I did do some for him during my first year but packing quiches for a local factory paid far better without needing to start at four or five in the morning. Mind you after seeing how they were made and packed, I didn't ever eat one again until David made us one. It was totally different and crafted with love.

Later on I made microscope slides for other students and the department, yes, the uni paid me to make them because I was better than the technician at doing so, especially things like rat brains which can be quite difficult and also doing some very specialised work on dissecting out the genitalia of some insects. I didn't realise they were for one of my tutors, who was an entomologist and he didn't realise I did them, he thought the technician did. When he thanked the guy with a bottle of wine, he technician was honest enough to tell him that he didn't do them. When asked who did, he replied, "Charlotte did 'em, she's an absolute whiz with delicate slides because she has thin fingers and can manipulate things better 'an me, I got big 'ands."

"When he spoke to Old Butterworth, the microbiology tutor, he was told that he should know Miss Watts, as she was one of his students.

"Miss Watts, only Watts I can think of is Charlie."

"That's her, Charlotte Watts, brilliant at making slides, I've had her making them for the uni she does them so well."

"Right, well give her this bottle of wine will you?"

When I was in one of his lectures he asked me to stay behind at the end. "Sorry, I was under the impression you were a boy, Charlie, though looking at you know I can see I was mistaken. I hope you got the wine, those slides were great and I was able to photograph them and they should be appearing in the RSE Journal next month the editor was really taken with them. First time one of those has been positively identified in the UK."

"Oh, good, so glad Dr Tyler, sorry, I have to rush for another lecture." We parted and I ran off before he could get a better look at me. Apparently he ever after thought I was female and I did some further slides for him later on.

"What did Old Tyler want?" asked one of the other girls.

"He just wanted to thank me for doing some slides for him."

"Yeah, well watch 'im, he's a bit of a ladies' man, " she cautioned before walking away towards her friends. I mean we were a cohort of over a hundred students, so you can forgive lecturers for not remembering individuals. They tended to if the girl was outstandingly pretty or had big boobs. I was neither, in those days I wasn't even a girl but it seemed many of them thought I was a grungy girl or an effeminate boy. That particular girl thought I was the former. I did eventually stand out because of the quality of the work I produced, I hardly ever went to the student's union, and from my birdwatching escapades. All the knowledge I had acquired as a schoolgirl, I used and expanded while at Sussex. I joined the university birder's club and we went off either and we recorded a bee-eater one year and a hoopoe another, both vagrants from the continent, but it was my record that was used in the annual report.

Uni wasn't all work and no play. I did more work than most because I wanted the best grade of degree I could achieve. I wasn't outstandingly academic, I had to slog for it but I got a first, which when I added some dormouse research I had taken over, gave me a BSc cum laude. It was mainly for my analysis of the data we had collected about dormeese and the conclusions I made, plus the need for further research, which I finally got to do at Portsmouth for my MSc. By then of course I had run into Stella or rather she ran into me, and I was under the supervision of Professor Agnew, the nicest man I ever met, except possibly for Simon, but then I fell in love with him and I'm still in love with him now. Professor Agnew, I call Daddy, because he unofficially adopted me and treated me better than ever my birth father did. We have had our ups and downs and I did threaten to kill him one day over a misunderstanding about our captive dormouse programme, I had him up against a wall I was so angry and I shocked him. We took a little while to get over that one, but I apologised and he did forgive me.

I've met some nice and some less nice people in my time in academia, so I have been very lucky. I've had very little opposition to my gender change, I think Danni had more troubles than I did, but then she is rather a high profile individual, which she should be given the talent and skills she has as a soccer player.

They came home on the Wednesday and she was exhausted but acknowledged she had played in a World Cup Final, an amazing experience. We hugged and hugged and hugged, she was very tearful, apologising for not having scored the goal to win it. She had hit the crossbar so she nearly did. I told her, it obviously wasn't to be and better luck next time. She flopped on the sofa and said, "I'm not sure I could do that all again."

"If you want a World Cup Winner's medal, you will," but she had fallen asleep on the sofa.