The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1782 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

We watched a bit of the Olympic games, after dinner, I let Simon put Trish to bed. He knew what was going on and we agreed that his presence at bedtime hopefully meant Trish would sleep easier.

Sammi felt rather angry that Bernadette was making waves and unsettling Trish and she was still angry after I said I wasn’t doing anything about the latest text.

“You can’t let her get away with it, Mummy, she’ll continue to pester you and Trish.”

“The hospital are pressing charges so she’ll have that to deal with soon enough.”

“Nah, she won’t care, she’s crazy–first of all she tries to make Trish into a boy–then disowns her when she can’t do it–then after you allow Trish to emerge from her boy chrysalis into a pretty little girl–she wants her back, for what?”

“I’m not sure if she realises Trish has had surgery, so she might think she can reverse everything else.”

“She’s mad then, Trish could never be a boy anymore than you could, Mummy.”

“Anyway, I suspect she’s got plenty to deal with so will hopefully get fed up and leave us in peace. If we don’t react, she’ll get fed up and annoy someone else.”

“Does Trish inherit anything from her father?”

“Apart from her brains–I don’t know. If she does there’ll be a few hiccups because it’ll all be in her old name.”

“Yeah, but legal beagles must be used to changing things or meeting people like us often enough. They’re quite happy to do the paper work to change things over, at exorbitant fees.”

“Talking of which have you done yours yet?” I asked Sammi.

“Yeah, Daddy did it for me with one of his lawyers while we were up in town.”

“Oh, he didn’t tell me.”

“Perhaps he left it to me to tell you?” she suggested.

“Could be.”

Later in bed, I took him to task over it. He was very dismissive, “Eric Blair came by and met with us for something and I asked him on spec if he could do a statutory declaration for Sammi sometime. He pulled out his laptop, found the template and printed off a copy and did it there and then.”

“Okay,” I pouted. I don’t know why I felt resentful for what was after all a helpful act, but I did; perhaps because I wanted to do it with her, like a rite of passage thing and now I couldn’t.

“What about this Watts woman?” he asked.

“I’ll bet you used to say that about me,” I blushed though I don’t know why.

“Nah, I used to say, ‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome dormouse catcher?’”

“And?”

“They all used to laugh at me.”

“Poor old Si,” I said and rubbed his arm. In retaliation he rubbed something of mine, so I rubbed something of–nah you don’t need to hear the sordid details except to say I had to go and have a little wash before I could go to sleep. We are married you know.

“The girls will be back in a couple of days time,” I reminded everyone at breakfast.

“What about Danny?” asked David.

“Yeah, him as well.”

“Well he’s not one of the girls, is he?”

“You knew what I meant.”

“Ah, but we endangered groups have to stick up for each other,” was his riposte.

“Eh?” I gasped.

“Don’t we, Tom?”

“Aye, that we dae,” added my father.

“Hey, you’re getting at me–you’re in the majority now, so watch it.”

“No we’re not, you haven’t counted Catherine,” David was giving me a real wind up.

“I stand corrected twice–once more and I have to resign and you have to take my place and be the mummy.”

“Very funny,” he said and gave me a filthy look. I couldn’t help but smirk. The one place we are vulnerable is being asked to revert to previous roles–there are one or two who can cope with it, but for most of us we’d rather face the fires of hell than revert. I was just teasing but sometimes we upper classes have to put the oiks in their place.

I cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast with Trish’s help and then we went to talk to the others via skype. We decided not to mention Bernadette to them, I’d bring them up to speed when they came home.

They’d been having a whale of a time and had actually seen a couple of the animals off the coast when they’d been out on a boat again. They saw dolphins or porpoises and it made their day–of course it did. Sadly, dolphins are quite a bit bigger than porpoises and will kill them if they can–presumably something about reducing the competition–but they do it on porpoise, I mean deliberately. So flipper isn’t quite so friendly as we like to think.

“We’ve got you a nice pwesent, Mummy,” announced Mima, only to be hushed by Livvie.

“If it’s a stuffed dormouse you can take it back right now.”

“Aw, you guessed,” sighed Julie, obviously lying through her teeth.

“You didn’t did you?” asked an incredulous Trish.

“Doh,” said Julie slapping her forehead in a passable Homer Simpson impersonation.

“Oh,” Trish was learning the hard way especially as all the others burst out laughing.

“We’re having paella for dinner tonight, Grampa Henry is taking us to a special restaurant in Mao.” Livvie seemed rather pleased with herself, knowing that I like the dish as well.

“So are we, so there,” Trish threw back at her, which was true. David had asked me what I wanted for dinner and I said we’d discuss after I’d spoken to the family on Menorca, so he suggested paella. I agreed immediately and he went off to get some shellfish to add to it. That and risotto are two of the nicest ways to eat rice.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to climb some mountain with a monastery on top.”

“El Torro,” said Trish scanning a map of Menorca, and it’s not a mountain, it’s only a hill.”

“Yeah, well it’s higher than Portsdown hill, according to Gramps and you can see over half the island from the top.” Livvie was retaliating on Trish’s put down.

We chatted for a couple of minutes longer, the pictures on the web cam weren’t too brilliant but they all looked well and that was my main concern. Finally we signed off and Julie sent us a few photos by email of the dolphin. There was only one and it was hard to decide quite what it was except a big grey blur in her pictures–but they meant something to her.

My Blackberry peeped to indicate a text had been received and I noticed Trish didn’t rush to get it. I slowly walked over to my desk and opened the text. It was from Simon asking what we were having for dinner and should he bring some wine. I told him paella and he suggested a Spanish wine and as he was outside a wine shop, he went in and bought some. Must remember to say, “Ola,” when he comes home this evening.