The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1926 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“The forecast doesn’t look good for tonight,” I said to Simon when we woke up.

“What, more rain?”

“No, the dreaded white stuff.”

“Oh–at least they get to use the sleds we bought, was it last year?”

“I think we’ve bought some every year–they’ve all got one, the girls and Danny, that is.”

“Why d’you want one as well, then?” he asked and nearly fell out of bed.

“No thank you.”

“We could call up Bath University and you could see if they had a spare dinner plate.”

“What?” I asked sitting up.

“That thing the girl won the medal for in the Winter Olympics.”

“I think it’s called a luge.”

“Yeah, about the size of a dinner plate.” He lifted the duvet and pretended to look at my bum. “Might need one of those they use for carrying a turkey.”

“Eh?”

“Your arse is bigger than hers.”

“Oh thank you, Si, that really helps my self esteem. I don’t go round telling you to buy maternity wear, do I?”

“Men don’t need it, we just go up a size in pants.”

“Huh, I’m in danger of crush injuries if we ever make love again, assuming little Simon can actually reach me.”

“I think I can guarantee that–wanna check, just in case?”

“I don’t think so, thank you, I’ve got to get up and get the kids to school.” It was certainly colder and I thought back to the previous snow episodes, when people had got hurt. Perhaps if I stayed away from the sled runs, it would mean no one got hurt. Or if they did, at least I couldn’t be accused of causing it or sorting it.”

“If we have snow tonight, will you take them out to play with their sleds tomorrow?”

“If I can’t get in to work, I suppose I could. Years ago I’d have taken my sleeping bag and a rucksack full of food and spare clothes to work. Now I’d prefer to come home to my wife and kids.”

“I hope that’s because you miss us, rather than you don’t fancy sleeping on the office floor.”

“I’ve got a bed settee in my office, I don’t need to sleep on the floor.”

“When did you get that?”

“After I slept on the floor last time.”

“Is this a bit of age showing up?”

“No, I just decided I wasn’t going to rough it any longer.”

“Can’t say I blame you, I gave up camping for the same sort of reasons. I’d prefer to sleep in a proper bed with a bathroom nearby.”

“Oh well with four of them and a cloak room here you should be able to find one at night.”

I found one and went to shower after a wee. I dried my hair and dressed then roused the girls. While they were showering, they know what to do now, I just check now and again; I got Danny and Julie up. It was only when Sammi poked her head out of her room and said, “Mummy, it’s Saturday.”

“Is it?” I went back to our radio controlled clock and she was right. They were all up now, and Julie had to go to work anyway. She gets well paid for working a Saturday and she appears to be a popular stylist.

David had ordered loads of stuff from Tesco online and they would deliver it later on. The girls were too awake to go back to bed so I decided we’d have a quick look round the remains of the sales. They each had some money to spend from Christmas, so they got quite excited about spending it.

We had breakfast, and wrapping up warm, and taking Catherine with us, we went off to see what the shops had to offer. By lunch time I’d seen nothing I wanted or fancied. The girls had seen plenty and it was only by some clever management that I persuaded them not to part with their precious pounds in return for rubbish.

Finally they did buy something each, but it was better quality than the things they’d looked at earlier. Coming back through M&S I spotted a pair of ankle boots which looked quite good and the price was excellent–so I bought them and some underpants for Simon, Danny and Tom. They were all reduced in price, so I felt they were a good buy.

Simon, we discovered, when we got home had taken Danny to see Southampton play Spurs or some other big club. I suspect it was expensive, football is–people paying fifty or sixty pounds a ticket for premiership league matches. I didn’t think Bristol Rovers or City were likely to get themselves promoted but I think near neighbours Cardiff were leading the championship league by ten points or something like it. So they’d have a good chance of promotion if they could keep it up.

For those who don’t have much idea of the British football league, there’s the Premiership with the massive clubs like Manchester United, Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal and so on. Next comes the Championship, with teams like Cardiff aspiring to be promoted to the Premiership. Below that is League One, two and three, and below that various semi-pro or non-league teams. Football is very popular still in this country, even though I tend not to watch it.

David had received and put away the shopping and had also bought a pile of meat from a local butcher, so the big freezers were also full–we have one in the basement and one in the utility room. Given the number of occupants of this habitation, we need to bulk purchase. We also have two large fridges–I mean large–like they have in restaurants, so we can store quite a lot of food. Just as well if it’s going to snow.

David had also started making bread the old fashioned way. Okay, it’s probably nicer than even the bread machine makes but it also takes a long time, proving the dough and everything, which the machine does for you while you do other things.

He usually does it when he’s spending a long time in the kitchen and can then knock out a few loaves, which don’t last long in this house.

Ingrid was busy in their shared cottages, cleaning or something, or she might have been spending time with Hannah, who comes over and plays with the girls sometimes, or she gets one or two friends from her school to come and visit her. She’s one I don’t have to pay to educate.

Did I mention we were going Europe wide with the survey. This didn’t mean I had to visit individual countries because they were doing the same as we’d been doing here, but individually. However, they all fed their results into our study and one of our clever IT people wrote a program which could number crunch huge totals. So we’d be able to produce a Euro-survey result, which was quite exciting. I was especially excited to see dormice results on the continent, which really encouraged me to want to go mousing over there.

The boys came back from their footie game and Simon came to see what I was doing. I had all sorts of printouts and graphs all over my desk and the floor. “What’s all this?” he asked looking at a couple of papers he picked up.

“Careful, you’ll mix them up.”

“Aren’t they collated?”

“Some bits are, we’ve only just got the graph and maps sorted.”

“Sammi,” he called and she loped into the room–she has very long legs–no wonder they wanted her as a model.

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Can you collate all this stuff for your mother?”

“Depends upon what’s wanted.” We sat and discussed it and in the end we had two systems running, one which showed comparisons across Europe of individual species and a volume for each country which had taken part.

It took her most of the evening and all of Sunday to organise, but before I went to bed on the Sunday evening, I had twenty five books of reports and statistics and a memory stick of the total survey. It was huge–the data not the stick–well it was thirty two gigs.