The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 2065 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

After seeing Anne Thomas I went off to do some shopping and was astonished when we bumped into each other in the supermarket. “We meet again,” I said smiling.

She glanced at her watch, “Have you got five minutes?”

I consulted mine, “I think so.”

“Good, let’s grab a coffee,” she suggested and I could hardly refuse.

We adjourned to the coffee shop attached to the supermarket and I insisted I get some drinks while she nabbed a table right in the corner and thus harder to be overheard.

A few minutes later I arrived at the table with a coffee for her and tea for me plus some cakes–well it was lunch time. I passed her a coffee and one of the two cakes she nodded a thank you and I slipped the tray into the slot under the table. As soon as I was seated she leant over in conspiratorial manner and said, “I know I saw you this morning, but I can’t remember anything about it–which is so strange, normally, I could tell you what happened in an interview months ago.”

“Nothing much happened, you were trying to explain something about the tree of life I think, but it was a bit obscure for me.”

“What was I on about that for?”

“Something about the colour gold, but it’s not important and I don’t remember either,” I lied.

“It’s just so weird, my memory is usually excellent.”

“How’s your back, you said you tweaked it gardening?”

“Fine, thank you–that’s weird too.”

“What is?” I asked pausing before taking a bite of my pastry.

“Well, it was hurting like hell before I left for work but it’s eased now.”

“Obviously whatever was pinched has freed itself.”

“Yes, I suppose it must have.” She sipped her coffee. “You wouldn’t have had anything to do with it, would you?”

“With what?”

“All of it.”

“Sorry, I thought I was the paranoid one?”

She smiled. “Okay, my back then.”

“I don’t know, Dr Thomas. Nothing conscious, but then things happen around me.”

“Yes they do, don’t they–didn’t we discuss that?”

“I think we did, I was accused of it by a reporter.”

“That’s right, we did–you felt guilty if I recall.”

“Sometimes,” I lied, she’d gone off on an erroneous tangent but it was safer than what had actually happened. Quite why she’d suffered an amnesia was beyond me, but I wasn’t in a hurry to reverse it.

“Thank goodness for that, I can write up some notes now–it worries me if I can’t. Thank you for being patient and helping me to remember.”

“Thank you for helping me, full stop.”

“Look Michael and I are having a little do next week, would you and Simon like to come? Normally I wouldn’t ask someone I’ve been working with, but my rapport with you is so good and I see you so infrequently, I feel it’s okay to invite you.”

“I’d have to check with Simon, but I suspect he’ll be free and we’d love to come.” I wrote down the details in my diary and also her home phone number. “Are you sure you want to give me that?” I checked.

“Cathy, if I didn’t feel it was safe to do so, I wouldn’t share it with you, besides I have some friends I think you’ll enjoy meeting.” She finished her coffee and dashed off leaving me feeling unsettled. Was it appropriate for a psychiatrist to socialise with a patient? I suppose it was if no therapy was happening, and certainly no therapy happened this morning, except her back easing–and yes, guilty as charged, that was me. I picked up on it long before she said anything about it and asked the energy to do its stuff–it obviously did.

Why wasn’t I honest with her about seeing Billie and the Tree of Life stuff, what would it have served except to worry her. I don’t know what happened, though I could quite easily imagine a scenario–which might be what happened. I wished as I left the place she hadn’t seen Billie or that I’d told her about the other episodes and hey presto, she forgot. Convenient or what? This stuff gets weirder by the day and I’m not convinced about any of it.

Energies I can cope with, I know they exist in nature from solar plasma eruptions to body heat from Simon and all things in between. According to Professor Cox, it’s all to do with the second law of thermodynamics. It might well be, and that seems far more plausible that deities and other supernatural entities which have no evidence to support them other than personal assertions, and those are always questionable being subjective rather than objective.

So here I am again being drawn between the subjective experience that I saw Billie and the objective reality that it was unlikely on account of her being dead. Okay, so perhaps it was, it felt quite real, but then I could have been dreaming. Lucid dreaming seems very real, I mean I still recall bits of the dream I had seeing Jesus on a spacehopper–now if that was real, the universe is more crazy than I could have imagined.

As for the others seeing things–perhaps that was all that happened. They picked up the idea from me, perhaps I was carrying it around with me in my own energy field and they picked up on it. Oh boy, this is giving me a headache–let’s just agree it was all a fancy, a whim or a dream: and leave it at that. It felt better already.

This religion stuff was so confusing as well as contradictory and seemed to do nothing but divide people and cause conflict–just look at the Middle East where different groups of Muslims are killing each other much like Christians were doing six hundred years ago, and about six years ago in Ireland. It still strikes me as ironic that the first crusade wasn’t against the Saracens but the Cathars and was the Church of Rome annihilating the opposition in the South of France, which was a shame as the Cathars seemed to have some interesting concepts like other Gnostic groups did and their parfaits looked to be much more men and women of an inspired theology than the all conquering Church of Rome who vanquished them. Mind you, only the likes of Francis Drake saved this island some four hundred years later when the King of Spain and his friends in Rome attempted an invasion.

It’s perhaps a sad reflection that the sailors after seeing off the Armada were confined to their ships many suffering severe malnutrition because there wasn’t enough money to feed or pay them. The English seem very good at ingratitude to their brave servicemen and women once the crisis is passed, not that I’m sure the Scots are much better. Perhaps it’s part of the callousness of power that the cannon fodder are only given a quick lip service thanks before you sacrifice others to achieve your aims. So glad I’m not a politician or a general, mind you I don’t think I’d be volunteering to be a footslogger either, more a conscientious objector–perhaps a cause worth dying for.

I suddenly glanced round and noticed my tea had been drunk and my pastry eaten probably an hour ago. I’d been locked in my own thoughts which a quick look at my watch showed had used up quite a bit of time. I needed to get home, feed Neal’s baby and then collect my girls from school. It was two o’clock, so I just about had time.