Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 781 by Angharad

The next forty-eight hours were a nightmare – Simon does not do illness. He ran me ragged, up and down stairs, back and fore to the bathroom with the bucket, then when he got the squits – poor bugger messed his pants. He got so upset when he saw me snigger.

Tom was brilliant, he worked for school hours, so he took the girls to school and brought them home again. Stella and Puddin’ went into self- imposed exile, and any attempt to communicate with them other than by phone was met with squirts from a disinfectant bottle. After the third time, I gave up trying to speak with her.

Poor Si, really did have the bug quite badly – but not as badly as he made out. It was one of those 48 hour tummy bugs; you’d have thought he’d got amoebic dysentery and E. coli at the same time. The E stands for Escherichia, in case you need to know, and is the cause of most of the Montezuma’s Revenge caught by travellers and tourists.

He lay on the bed groaning and writhing – I didn’t know who to phone first, the doctor, the undertaker or theatre critic. When I told him it couldn’t be that bad, he played hell with me, calling me hard-hearted, callous, uncaring and unsympathetic. Of course they were all true, if I showed any sympathy, the symptoms suddenly got worse. Mind you I did walk past the bedroom ringing a small hand-bell and shouting, “Bring out your dead.” He didn’t think it was very funny, especially when I told him we were going to dig a plague pit in the garden. The way the press hyped swine flu, anyone would have thought we’d have to do it for that –millions were going to die and fit and healthy folk. So far, everyone in the UK who’s died has had an underlying health problem or been old or very young.

I know there’s still time for it to revisit us, and they say it might in the winter; not much I can do about it except wash my hands regularly and avoid the coughs and sneezes of others.

I made some soup and bread and took him up a bowl. Despite being at death’s door he managed to ask for seconds and promised not to die while I went and got it for him. Simon’s forty-eight hours managed to be extended to ninety-six – oh he wasn’t being sick or diarrhoeal, he had such a bad head. When I joked that he was just avoiding sex, he accused me of being cruel because he didn’t have the strength or stamina to do anything. Sometimes I wonder how many children I’m caring for.

No one else got the bug thankfully. Simon of course made mention of one of us being a carrier – I told him I was not, I was a Prada handbag. He didn’t get the joke until Trish pointed it out to him.

When I had a few minutes to glance through The Guardian, I could see the world hadn’t changed, idiots were still blowing themselves up and killing innocent bystanders – do they honestly believe they are doing God’s work? If so, it must be a strange god, not the Allah of the Quran, who I believe is more merciful than the major player in the Old Testament was – but what do I know? How can the same God who told Moses — ‘thou shalt not kill’, in the next breath talk about wiping out the enemies of the Israelites?

Ho hum, definitely the opium of the masses. I got about three clues done in the cryptic crossword when Simon banged on the floor – again. I wearily trudged up the stairs again and asked him what was wrong?

“Nothing, I just wondered if you’d seen my pencil anywhere, I wanted to do a Sudoku.”

“You mean, you dragged me all the way up here to find your stupid pencil?”

“It’s not stupid, and I had it a minute ago – it can’t be far away.”

“Why can’t you look for it?”

“I would, but it would mean getting out of bed.”

“Yeah –– so?”

“Well, I’m ill, aren’t I?”

“You will be if you drag me up here again on a fool’s errand.”

“What?”

“Look for your own bloody pen.”

“It was a pencil, actually ––”

“Grrrrr!” I turned on my heel and stormed out of the room.

“Are you cross with me, Cathy?” called a pathetic voice as I descended the stairs. I wasn’t cross, I was incandescent. How can he lie there and play the invalid when there is nothing whatsoever wrong with him.

“If you want any dinner, you can come down for it, you lazy hypochondriac.” I shouted this up the stairs before I went into the kitchen to take my temper out on a poor chicken, I was going to stuff. I looked at it and said, “You look healthier than he’d have me believe he is,” Curiously, the chicken didn’t say much in return.

When Tom brought the girls back, Meems finally had someone to play with, no not Trish and Livvie, but her Grampa and he jumped at the chance. I had read to her or tried to, but Simon kept disturbing us. I even suggested that he read to her as he wasn’t doing much other than banging on the floor. He couldn’t, he was much too ill. I felt like strangling him.

Meems helped me make some bread and scrape the potatoes – the girls are so good really, I try to make some of the chores seem like games and they take the bait every time – as none of them are stupid, I’m sure they only do it to humour me.

After a biscuit and a drink, Trish and Livvie sat down to do their homework; they had to colour in different types of shape. A precursor to geometry? No wonder they’re cleverer than I am – I wasn’t introduced to Euclid until I was eleven, let alone Pythagorus and his hippopotamus.

I asked them if anyone else had been sick at school, and Trish told me that six from her class alone were off ill. Livvie added that several had been sick over the weekend, same as they had.

“Well you avoided your appointment with Dr Henschelwood, so it wasn’t all bad, was it?”

Trish made a face and shook her head. Livvie laughed. I told them both that I’d made one for when he comes back, and Trish groaned – Livvie of course laughed again, so Trish pretended to cry but it was such a ham attempt, we both laughed even more.

“How come you and Gramps weren’t ill, Mummy?” asked Trish.

“Luck. Sometimes you don’t actually catch the bug, or you have some immunity to it.”

“What’s immunity, Mummy?”

“It means your body has some defence against the germ, possibly because you’ve had it before or something similar and the defences recognise it and stop it.”

“How do they do that, Mummy?”

Geez, why not ask a difficult question? “It’s a bit complicated but we have mechanisms inside us which patrol our bodies waiting for germs to try and get in.”

“Like an anti-virus program on the computer?”

“Just like that, Trish, now finish your homework while I check the dinner,” I escaped before they wanted to know the wavelengths of the Aurora Borealis.

Simon did come down for dinner – mainly because it was the only way he was going to get any. I sent Meems up to tell him I was dishing up and he’d better get himself ready. He came down in his pyjamas and dressing gown – he hadn’t worn them since he was in hospital, until this major illness from which he was trying to recover..

Tom carved the chicken and my garlic and sage with mustard stuffing worked quite well. It was an experiment which I made up as I looked in the cupboard and found we had no onion or mushrooms. Actually, we did have some spring onions, so I did use some of those and we did have some tinned sliced mushrooms, so they got used as well.

Simon was so poorly he could only eat two lots of dinner – he was trying to regain his strength, I think it was more likely he would regain all the weight he’d lost plus some extra.

The girls had a piece of fruit for dessert, Tom and I had nothing and Simon was going to have a tub of yoghurt until I suggested he’d eaten more than enough. He sulked off back to bed then.

After I put the girls to bed and read them a story, I went down to have a cuppa with Tom. “Did you see this?” He showed me a print out from the internet.

“They could have told us,” I grumbled, “bloody Sussex.”

“They pass on their records to you anyway, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but a nutter’s walk to look for dormice – why didn’t we think of it?”

“Too late now, PTES* got there first.”

“I suppose I’ll get the records eventually,” just as I was gearing myself up to get back into the fray and I get pipped by a charity – bloody typical, absolutely bloody typical.

PTES = People’s Trust for Endangered Species (mammals).