(aka Bike) Part 1880 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad
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We arrived back in Pompey mid afternoon, just in time to go straight to the school to collect the girls. I’d got Phoebe to call Stella and say I’d get the girls. We had about quarter of an hour to wait before they left school, so we sat and chatted without me having to watch the road.
“Were you always being mistaken for a girl?”
“What, now?” I played stupid. “I hope it isn’t a mistake.”
“No,” she chuckled, “before all this happened.”
“It happened with a certain amount of regularity, especially if I was out with Siá¢n. We’d always been honest with each other. I knew she was lesbian long before she told anyone, and she knew I was a girl almost before I knew it myself. I did sort of know in nursery, because I used to love dressing up and playing with dolls and tea sets rather than cars.”
“So when you were little what did you want to grow up to be?” she asked smiling.
“A postmistress.”
“A what?”
“I wanted to have a post office, you know, and stamp old biddies’ pension books and sell them stamps.”
“Not a scientist?”
“That didn’t happen until I got a microscope, then I wanted to be Marie Curie and discover a cure for cancer or Dutch Elm Disease.”
“There’s a bit of a difference, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, but I had the post office set when I was ten, and the microscope when I was twelve, so part of me wanted to discover the cure for both these things while still working in my post office.”
“You were going to be quite busy then?”
“Only if I went for bike rides at weekends, otherwise it would have been easy peasy. To a twelve year old, anything is possible.”
“So how come you went into dormice?”
“I got to know a boy at Sussex who was doing something with them for his degree, and he was looking for a helper. No one else seemed interested, which surprised me as they’re about the cutest critters on the planet.”
“Did you think you were going to be a world authority on them then?”
“I don’t now.”
“But you’re the one they come to ask for assistance when it involves dormice.”
“Sometimes.”
“And you made the film about them.”
“So? St Attenborough’s made films about everything, but he’s more of an expert on making films than any species. He’s a spokesman for the green lobby, but he’s not an expert on any particular group of animals.”
“Isn’t he?”
“Not as far as I know, but it doesn’t matter. He’s got a huge following amongst the British public and they trust him, so when he says global warming is a problem, they believe him, unlike the oil lobby who try to spread lies to say it’s all a mistake.”
“It isn’t one though, is it?”
“No the climate is changing. Just look at the polar ice caps. Perhaps they’ll believe it when the only polar bears are in zoos.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Yes it is, but it’s an illusion according to the oil lobby. Then you have the Japanese whalers, killing five hundred minke whales for experimental purposes, but they can sell the meat commercially–except no one wants to buy it. How can that be science? It’s total hogwash and barbaric–the poor animals can take hours to die.”
“I don’t think I want to know, Mummy, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Then the shark fin soup brigade–anyone who wants to eat that should have their arms and legs cut off and be dropped into a deep swimming pool.”
“Ugh, Mummy, you can be quite cruel.”
“That’s effectively what they do to the sharks, just cut their dorsal fins off and the poor things drown.”
“Who wants to eat shark fin soup–it sounds revolting?”
“The Japanese, who else–they’re an ecological disaster on legs.”
“I’m not sure I want to know, Mummy.”
“The girls will be out in a moment,” I said, trying to calm myself down. I was aware that Eastern and Western cultures had different foci, but my experience of the East had been a systematic destruction of other country’s forests or seas while leaving their own alone. Now we know so much more about the consequences of overfishing or logging we should be more responsible, but we aren’t and some places are consistently worse than others. I needn’t give you any clues who that is.
The girls wandered out expecting to see Stella, so were delighted to find Phoebe and I sitting there waiting for them. They dashed up to the car and I had to get out to give them each a hug.
“Mummy, we didn’t expect you,” cried Livvie.
“I thought I’d surprise you.”
“We were expecting Auntie Stella,” declared Trish.
“Oh well, I’ll go back then and ask her to come, shall I?”
“No, do stay, Mummy,” Trish pleaded holding on to my arm.
“How about we go and get an ice cream?” My suggestion was passed unanimously, so off we went to the small cafe we usually visited for such treats, except it was closed.
We were all peering through the dirt on the door or windows when the woman from the shop next door came out and spoke to us. “She’s closed–has been for weeks.”
“So we see,” I said stating the obvious.
“Her husband’s very ill.”
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, he’s not expected to recover.”
“Poor chap,” what else could I say?
“Yeah, any time now,” continued our Job’s comforter.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Trish.
“He’s got bad diabetes–lost both his legs–he had an ingrowing toenail and wouldn’t go and see anyone until his foot went all gangrene. Horrible it was, so she said. Then it was too late and his other leg started playing up, so they cut ’em both off.”
“How old is he?”
“Seventy odd. he got blood poisoning from the operation, then he got a stroke, and last I heard, he had pneumonia as well.”
While listening to this catalogue of human suffering I was tempted to think of the joke about the dog, ‘lost, dog — identifying features, three legs, one ear, blind in one eye, tail damaged in accident, very deaf, answers to the name of Lucky.’
I was still contemplating my joke when the woman obviously running out of symptoms to report went back into her shop and we go back into the car. We ended up at the general stores on the way home and bought a tub of ice cream, which meant Danny and the little ones could have some too, so all in all perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing for us after all.
We got a warm welcome especially from Puddin’ when she saw the ice cream, and Danny was just arriving from school when I was dishing up. He took his dish of ice cream and still wearing his coat, sat at the kitchen table and ate it with gusto.
“Mum, they’re doing a school trip to the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars next March, can I go?”
“How much is it?”
“Dunno–sounds really good, Normandy, the Somme.”
“Depending on how much it is, probably.”
“Oh great,” he danced around before machine gunning his sisters as they ate their ice cream. Lovely creatures–boys.
Comments
Oh, good you did publish tonight!
I was just thinking about what to write in my whingy, piteous complaint about your not doing so. :) Do I smell another blue light oportunity in the offing?
Thank You
Gwendolyn
Coincidentally ...
... I was watching an old Channel 4 documentary on my PC immediately before checking in to read 'Bike'. The subject? WW1 air combat. Sorry but though I hate war I like aeroplanes and Avro 504Ks, Fokker Dr1s and especially SE5as are amongst my favourites. There's something of a dichotomy there I know but considering the sophisticated SE5a was flying in 1917 just 14 years after the crude Wright Flyer staggered into the air at Kitty Hawk is a remarkably fast development that interests me.
Somewhat off-topic, I guess so I'd better thank Ang for yet another lovely bedtime story :)
Robi
I hate war also.
I'm firmly convinced that if the president and the congress were first into battle, that we'd find a much more peaceful existence. Not my idea, Plato probably said it first.
I keep a photo on the wall at home. In it, there is a well used plywood, and 2x4 table, around 3'x 8' or so, that had once been painted light blue. Who knows what it's original purpose was.
In the picture, a boy about 6-8 years old is laying upon it. He has a really pretty face for a boy with well defined eye brows, and long lashes. His eyes are open, as if talking to his Mother whose face is quite close to his. At first I thought her left arm was wet but from the stains on the table, I can see that her left arm and part of the table are covered in blood. His arm is almost touching the side of her neck, and her pretty sheer white hijab (yes she is muslim) is also covered in blood.
I have no idea if he lived or died; if he was having a conversation with his Mother, or if she is looking into his now vacant eyes.
Someone please tell me that Christmas means something and that one day humanity will adopt more peaceful ways, please?
G
Lucky Dog
is a very old joke. I wonder if Cathy will blue light the fella, and check on Danny's trip.
May Your Light Forever Shine
Poor chap
It does show that Cathy may be a vehicle for Shekinah's power but she is not being used higgily piggily. One would think she would be lead to heel him, but then again maybe not. Sometimes it is just Fate.
Kim
Gossipy
I think this is what happens to incurable, terminal gossips as they age. Earlier in life they talked about who slept with who, who cheated on who, etc. Then maybe, who's got a drinking problem, such and such's child is gay, and isn't that scandalous? Then the evolution of the gossip seems to end up with who has what kind of medical disorder. And then this person is talking to you (or whatever other unfortunate victim they can find) about the bowel cancer of someone you don't even know while you try to escape them in the politest way possible. Since I don't like gossips at all, I think this is kind of fitting.
Its not nice for
anyone to suffer the health problems the shopkeeper has, Especially when the main cause was so easily treated, Maybe Cathy could help with the aid of her blue light but you would have to say that with so many problems it might well prove to be beyond the scope of even that power ..
Then of course there is the problem for his wife a shop and a disabled husband would be too much for even a young woman to cope with let alone someone who in better circumstances might be considering retirement , Much as Cathy loves to help perhaps this is a time to let nature take its course.
Kirri