The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1950 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Did you have the funny dream, Mummy?” asked Livvie.

“And which funny dream would that be?” I asked.

“The one in the cemetery.”

“Cemetery?”

“Yes, where we met your mummy and daddy and Nanny Celia and Auntie Catherine with Billie.”

“What happened?” I asked knowing full well what happened in my dream.

“We all met up and talked and hugged each other and you got on really well with Nanny Celia and Auntie Catherine. They asked you to continue taking good care of Gramps.

“And what did I say?” I teased.

“You said you would.”

“See, I’m a kind lady really, aren’t I?”

“Yes, Mummy,” she laughed.

Trish coming back from the loo asked what we were talking about. “We were talking about you.”

“Me?” she asked he eyes lighting up. She seems to have the same opinion as Oscar Wilde–‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’

“No, I was asking Mummy about the funny dream.”

“Oh, she’ll have had it too, she always does when I have one like that, Billie makes sure of it. That was when I heard the bad guys trying to steal her car, when I came in to speak to her about it.”

“I wonder how the policeman is?” I mused aloud.

“He’ll be okay, we both worked on him.”

“That was very clever of you to bring the bucket of water and throw it over the man with the knife.”

“That was my idea,” said Livvie her body almost visibly swelling with pride.

“It was very clever, all the same, if a bit dangerous.”

“Well, we don’t have a gun, do we–cos I coulda shot him,” offered her sister.

“I think the police would have taken a dim view of that,” I suggested.

“Their bloke wouldn’t have been stabbed then, if we’d shot ’em both.”

“I think there are quite enough people being shot without us joining the madness.” My views on guns and shooting people were well known, but then I had actually shot someone. The memory made me shiver as I recalled the car trying to kill us while we were in Scotland and how I fired back without much idea of what I was doing, but then the object of machine guns is to point and fire until you hit something. Snipers are the ones who know what they’re doing in the killing game. I’d met a couple of them, one from the SAS and the other SBS–they seemed pretty normal, but they’d also been professional killers–more so than ordinary troops–highly trained and skilled.

“C’mon, we need to get up, I’ve an appointment at the BBC, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” giggled Trish and set her sister off by making a silly face.

We all showered and dressed and by the time we’d dressed, dried our hair and had breakfast, it was nearly time to go. I had a few minutes and hung the clothes from the washing machine on the line–as far as I could see, the blood had washed out of them.

So what did I wear? Not the shorts and top from the dormouse film, instead I had a skirt suit and a blouse on. The suit was in olive green linen with a beige blouse in silk and I wore a diamond and gold dormouse brooch on the lapel of the jacket, which Simon had had made for me for Christmas.

I took my iPad with me for any information required about the survey, it’s one with 64GB memory. I prefer laptops, but these notepad things are really convenient and so quick. They do them with even more memory, but this was okay for me and with the retinal display, whatever that means–load of balls, I suppose–eyeballs.

I wore the suit with brown courts and a matching brown bag–they were a present from Stella–can’t remember what for this time, but they were very nice and such soft leather, sadly my iPad case didn’t match, that was a greyish black colour, but it was leather.

The girls had their iPads in their backpacks so I reminded them not to drop their bags or throw them around because we wouldn’t replace any that they broke. It wasn’t quite true because they were all insured, but they didn’t know that; and it’s good to remind them that five hundred pound toys don’t grow on trees.

At the BBC natural history unit, we met with Erin and after getting our visitor stickers, we were led to a hospitality room for coffees while we waited for the studio to be made ready. Someone had obviously told Prof Harris that I was bringing in two of my kids because he turned up with a small soft toy of a fox and one of a badger and presented them to my girls. They were so excited.

They spent the half an hour we had in the hospitality room showing their stuffed animals to Erin and then Trish pulled out her iPad and showed all these clips of film of badgers, foxes, weasels, stoats, dormice–wonder where that came from. That she knew something about all of them including some data on distribution she must have taken from the survey website, and status of each animal–either increasing, decreasing or static in terms of range and numbers.

Professor Harris was gobsmacked. “What are we doing here? She knows it all better than we do?”

“They couldn’t afford her, her rates are twice mine–she’s a mean negotiator,” I said quietly and he chuckled.

The producer was really kind to the girls and in return they were better behaved than usual. They sat and watched us–we were in a small studio with glass surrounds, so they could see us all the time. They sat still and waited, in return, because they were good, the producer showed them round the technical side where the editor sits and the sound technician and so on.

As for the show, as they termed the programme, we chatted about the risk of foxes in towns–they’re wild animals and should be left alone. If you feed them, just put the food out and don’t try to tame them, and keep your doors shut.

I agreed with that. We have them in the garden at home, as well as badgers and they get some scraps from time to time. Foxes help to keep rats and mice down, badgers unfortunately tend to do the same with hedgehogs, but not as successfully as motor cars. I was able to plead for people to try and leave rough areas in their gardens for hedgehogs and to be careful with bonfires-they sometimes hibernate in the pile of rubbish being stacked for bonfires.

The presenter, Jane Clough, asked me, “Well, Cathy, we can’t leave without you telling us about dormice–we all remember the film you made last year, which was so informative. So how are dormice doing?”

I did my stuff, referred to the mammal survey and asked for volunteers, as we were hoping to keep it running for several more years. I told her about the data we had for dormice and what we needed to do for them and several other species, but doubled the plea for hedgehogs which were declining so rapidly.

“And, I hear you’re doing a film on the harvest mouse?”

“It’s in the preparatory stages, still sussing sites and my colleague, Alan White, is looking at the technical elements of filming them.”

“Will you present it–I hope so, and my husband is hoping you’ll wear the same shorts.”

“I haven’t considered what I’ll wear yet, but I’ll discuss it with the producer.” Prof Harris nearly fell off his chair when she asked the question and sat there sniggering while I got very hot and very red.

The girls and Erin were listening outside and Erin snorted at my answer about the shorts. Trish asked why and she replied, “Ask the producer, my hat! She is the producer.”