The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1498 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

While Simon and Danny were out in the car, I perused the bill I’d received from the garage. I’d paid it when the car was returned and after looking at it, I slipped it into the book, Whitehead had made for the car’s documents. It was one of those punched pocket thingies, and just flicking through it, I saw how much care he’d taken in restoring it–even having the engine converted to run on unleaded–and what do I do? Let a lunatic loose in it with one of the children.

I passed the time doing some ironing–I’d had enough of course work and lesson planning. I’d agreed to do some of the teaching in conjunction with Cowdrey Huntingdon–yeah, what a mouthful–but he was nice enough as plant ecologists go. Sadly my botany never got much beyond pistils and calyxes. I quite enjoyed slicing up greenstuff to stick under a microscope but killing even insects used to make me feel sick. We used locusts and cockroaches and the poor little buggers used to try like mad to escape the poison–usually chloroform–for some dumb teenager to cut into bits to see how they worked.

Lots of it can be done by theory–I avoided the chopping up bits–and still got the best marks in my year because I was prepared to research. I’ve still got a copy of Imms’ Textbook of Entomology, which I found in a second hand bookshop in Hay on Wye–yeah, where April Ashley was supposed to live. I never saw her there, but my dad would take me once a year to look at the bookshops. As I usually bought non-fiction books, he considered I was being a diligent student–sometimes I was.

Because I wore a unisex outfit of tight jeans and loose sweat shirt with trainers and carried a small backpack, with my long hair tied back in a ponytail, I was often addressed as Miss. Each time I felt a little victory, although I had to be careful when Dad was about or he’d have made me get my hair cut. I know all teenagers have issues with their parents, but transgender teens have extra ones as well as all the normal ones.

I’ve related how my mother showed me the basics of cooking, cleaning and mending clothes. She showed me how to sew on buttons and mend split seams; to darn socks, take up hems and replace pockets. I learned how to iron clothes, press trousers even cope with frills and ruffles–did she know more than she let on?

My father taught me how to do basic bike maintenance and I went from there. The other kids may not have like cycling with me, because I couldn’t keep up with them, but they used to come round if they needed advice on fixing the gears, or putting in new brake cables.

Back to my mother. I’ll never understand how she taught me to sew then got mad when she saw me doing it. The time my dad beat me was over some cross-stitch. True she’d never taught me any embroidery, but she had taught me how to handle a needle pretty well, so what could she expect–not a son who did embroidery, obviously. Possibly she got mad because I was cheeky to her or had been a bit of a pain in destroying her religious belief–I was one of those horrible kids who because I didn’t like something, I’d spoil others fun if they weren’t clever enough to see it coming. I was cleverer than both my parents and used my cleverness to destructive effect. Then if they’d been more accepting of who I really was, possibly I’d have been less inclined to be nasty.

I’ve tried to deal with it over the years and I’m never sure if I have or not. It did come in useful during a debate at uni, when my destructive rhetoric scuppered a motion, This house believes a woman’s place is in the home.

I was obviously against the motion, with two rather pretty girls, who were both feminists, the supporting team were two boys and girl who really just wanted babies and lots of them. Unfortunately, she was the one who felt the sting of my tongue as I spoke after her.

Of course, the retaliation came at me, that I obviously wished I was a girl otherwise why would I be against a motion which enabled women to fulfill their biological destiny and have babies. I quoted Bowlby on attachment and the importance of a significant parent, who needn’t necessarily be the mother. Yeah–I got heckled from the floor that I obviously wanted to be a mother. I blushed because it was true, but I did resist the urge to agree with them.

We won by thirty votes, sixty nine to thirty nine–mind you, it might also have been because the audience was packed with the university lesbian group. See, I have no delusions of grandeur. I also had no expectations that they would stop teasing me either, because they didn’t–stop I mean.

Lots of people at the university assumed because I was a bit–okay, quite a bit feminine–that I was gay. I had loads of blokes try it on with me but I ignored or politely refused them. The lesbians thought I was in denial so they tormented me at times. Funnily enough there was a small transgender group too, but I was so unsure of myself, that I kept away from them. Silly really, but life’s been good to me.

I continued the ironing, doing it the way I’d adapted from my mother’s teaching, even doing some frills on Mima’s dress, and reminiscing. The sound of a car engine and lights sweeping the drive announced Simon’s return. He was beaming when he came in.

“That car is magnificent,” he declared and Danny nodded in agreement. “Does Whitehead want to sell it?”

“I doubt it.” I said moving the dress on the ironing board.

“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

“He won’t accept it.”

“How d’you know?”

“Because I do.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Simon was becoming irritated that he couldn’t buy somebody. Danny, aware of the situation left before he gave the game away, saying thanks to Simon as he left the kitchen.

“You’re welcome, son.” That expression nearly melted my heart like sunshine on an Easter egg.

“I know he wouldn’t part with it.” I shrugged and the iron hissed a jet of steam into Mima’s dress, and I continued pressing it.

“Bugger.” Simon went to the fridge and helped himself to a can of Guinness. “You want anything?” he asked.

“A cuppa would be nice.”

“Okay, I’ll make you a mug of gnat’s pee.” He often grumbled because I like my tea weak to helpless.

I heard the kettle boil and the tea bag dropped in the bin, then the fridge door opened and I heard a splosh of milk added to my tea. “I’ll put it on the table.”

I thanked him and watched him pour the stout into a glass. Then he sucked the froth out of the can, rinsed it and left it inverted on the draining board to put in the recycling box when drained.

“Would you like to use the car while yours is in dock?”

“What, your car?”

“No, I need that–the old one.”

“Whitehead’s one?”

“Yes, the S-type, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Course I’d like to use it, but not much chance of that, is there.”

“There is actually.”

“What? You’re not stringing me along here are you?”

“No, I have the owner’s permission for you to use it until yours comes back.”

“Oh you lovely woman–ouch,” he touched his hand against the iron.

“You can give me a kiss after I finish ironing.”

He sat at the table sipping his Guinness and looking like a cat who’d just found a big dish of cream. I would tell him eventually, but it would be an anticlimax if he thought all he had to do was ask me–now he thought he’d been really privileged and I didn’t want to burst that bubble too soon.