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(aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2196 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad
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‘You big bully, fancy threatening to take Trish’s bracelet back to the shop.
Thanks for the notes, I’m glad all the girls appreciated their loot and I’m pleased you found the locket, corny I know, but Simon thought it was a good idea. It’s for your birthday as well as a thank you for my week with you. I’m not made of money despite what you’ve heard about GP’s pay, it’s nothing like banker’s bonuses — don’t show this to Simon, he’ll foreclose my mortgage.
I’ve learnt a lot from being with you for that few days. There never was a Charlie, was there, it was just a mask for Cathy, a sort of chrysalis for her to emerge from when the time was right, and you did. You make me proud to both know you and to be a woman, despite your own false start on the journey. I can’t believe you were ever anything but female and legit and I’ve known you most of your life, so don’t argue and never let anyone tell you any different, including yourself.
Cathy, you’re one of my dearest friends and I love you like I would a sister, I’m so glad we reconciled the little hiccup we had, I’d have been devastated to have lost you and all my nieces (is Danielle going to stay the course or will I have a nephew with insight into a woman’s perspective?).
I love you all, including that big galoot you married and the old geezer, wotsisname–only joking, plus of course my old sparring partner and her two little dolls. (Is it true you taught one of them to swear just to annoy her mother?).
I’d love to see you again soon as would Kirsty, she sends her love. Oh by the by, the father of her baby has requested and received a transfer to another parish, he’s in Lincolnshire somewhere, pity it wasn’t Siberia.
Love,
Siá¢n
xxx’
I wondered what had happened with the curate chap, unless it was Siá¢n that happened to him. If they met in a bare-knuckled fight, my money would be on the Welsh one–she’d murder him. I suppose I’ll find out the next time we get together.
It was the weekend after she’d gone and the media was full of the dreadful details of this hurricane thing that hit the Philippines. They suggest thousands might be dead or badly injured, mind you with winds approaching two hundred miles an hour and sea surge of ten metres or some such thing, frail things like human bodies would have no chance from the debris it would hurl at them.
I remember seeing a shed roof being bowled across a school field at a rate of knots by a gale force wind. If it had hit anyone, it would have killed them or even cut them in half. The power of the elements is unimaginable and my mind went back to watching the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. It was like the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, awful but fascinating: as if you can’t actually believe the evidence of your eyes and can’t tear them away from the wretchedness of the spectacle. If you do it seems to draw them back like some magnetic effect.
I sent some money to MSF, they’re always amongst the first to get anywhere there’s trouble. I wondered how long it would take to organise relief and how many lives would be lost between then and now. The reports on the radio were pitiful and I had tears in my eyes when I walked to the bathroom and had a shower.
I also wondered how long it would be before we acknowledged that this was caused by climate change and that it won’t be the last of these super storms. The climatologists predicted them so surely no one with half a brain can refute the evidence–even former presidents of the US.
“Boo,” said a voice loudly and I nearly had to change my panties. This was followed by a demonic chuckle which could only belong to a certain half-wit genius for whom I was somehow legally responsible–ah, I remember now, I’m her mother.
“Trish Watts, one of these days you’ll give me a heart attack.”
“Don’t worry, Mummy, I’ll fix it for you if I do.” There’s nothing like self-confidence, hers bordered on arrogance, but she was possibly telling the truth, which is even more frightening.
I remembered being told by a much larger boy that I was arrogant and he was going to crush me–we were playing chess. My response, an angelic smile and a declaration of check mate in three. He fell apart and I did it in two. He demanded a rematch and I offered him one then and there. He was so angry, I beat him again, quite easily. I then smiled at him said quite matter of fact, “If you’ve got it flaunt it.”
He waited for me after school with a gang of his mates, I did contemplate running away or going home by the long route. Instead I developed the idea of street fighting where everything is a weapon.
He stood there challenging me to fight him, I walked towards him asking why he wanted to fight. He told me because I cheated at chess. How can you cheat at chess? I ridiculed him and he just got angrier and angrier, calling me a bitch and other derogatory female names. I told him to go home and learn some better words.
“Or what? What are you gonna do about it?”
The only weapon to hand was my schoolbag. He walked towards me and I threw it to him, thereby momentarily taking his hands away from me. I then stepped round him and kicked him behind his knee. He fell down dropping my bag, I kicked him in his back and his face hit the ground. I picked up my bag and walked away. Some of his friends were going to sort me out but Mr Whitehead appeared and they all seemed to fade away.
The next day he sent for me. “You’re very lucky there isn’t a policeman waiting to talk to you, you damaged the ligaments in his knee.”
“He was the one who wanted to fight, I told him I wasn’t interested.”
“I saw it happen and I also heard that you’d humiliated him at chess. Why didn’t you run away like you usually do?”
“Because he’d have come after me or this would have happened until he either hurt me or stopped him.”
“That was a high risk strategy, Watts, he could have killed you?”
“He could only do it once.”
Mr Whitehead shook his head. “So girly Watts takes out a large thug in the hope that others might leave her alone; is that it?”
I made a deliberately feminine gesture with my hair, flipping it back and repositioning the scrunchie and shrugged. “Go on, get out of my office, just don’t try it again, next time you might not be so lucky, Charlotte.” I walked away and thinking back over what had happened, he was probably right. I always avoided fights after that, although I still got the odd beating many of the bullies stayed away from me.
I later heard the kid I’d kicked had an operation on his knee–sad but his own fault. His was the arrogance that caused his downfall not mine, he was over confident that he would flatten me without breaking a sweat that he didn’t think I might start the attack with something nasty. He was lucky, later on I learnt you kick at the knee cap and if you displace it, you can cripple them. Yeah, this wasn’t schoolboy stuff, I was a pocket assassin, it was just that none of us knew it–just as well.
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Comments
I like the way
Little snippets of Cathy's early life keep dropping into the saga. So Cathy was always a bit belligerent, then; if only sometimes in her mind?
S.
So, we learn...
So, we learn "Charlie" Watts was a bully in disguise. We've had hints before.
Little miss Trish... She keeps things up and *sighs* she'll end up friendless... Kids tend to either act much better away from home or much worse (more the later), at least that's been my observation. One can HOPE she'll grow up, just a little. It seems that occasionally Cathy and even Simon can act like adults. :-)
Thanks,
Annette
Interesting concept
Not quite sure how you arrived at it, fighting for survival isn't something I'd regard as bullying. In fact it was the bully who got his comeuppance on two levels, intellectual and physical.
Angharad
It was...
It was an attempt at "humor" mostly...
Though, seemed to me "Charlie" set things up a little... May have been reading something into it that wasn't there though.
Annette
I have to keep saying
Oh, the million dollar question
is Danielle going to stay the course or will I have a nephew with insight into a woman’s perspective?
I truly wonder what will happen with Danni.
I will keep reading in order to find out
hug
Jackie
Hurricane Haiyan
Glad Cathy donated to MSF. Another worthwhile agency in the UK is the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) which incorporates several organisations like Oxfam and the Red Cross. You can donate by going to their web page http://www.dec.org.uk/.
I find it amazing that there a people prepared to fork out £90,000,000 for a painting when there are people so poor they can't feed themselves or their families. The trouble with being a bleeding heart wishy-washy liberal I guess :)
We had a bit of a blow in the southern UK a few weeks ago. The blow in the Philippines puts it into perspective.
Robi
There once was a bully.
When I was in 7th grade, a boy was throwing rocks at my little brother. I told him several times to stop. I even chased him off once and he came back to heckle me. Finally, after repeated efforts to get him to stop I decided to run him down and kick his ass. He was younger and smaller than me so I could not imagine why he would not relent. I was very concerned he would hit my brother. As we ran through a garden, I grabbed a broom handle sized stick and struck him with it. He ran off crying, but did not seen injured.
A few days later, a boy much larger than I stopped me in the hall, telling me that I had ruptured his brother's spleen. The boy did not beat me up saying, he just wanted me to know. I was never in another fight.
Gwendolyn
Thank you for another great episode
The Game would only contain just a few songs that I could think of Bicycle by Queen, Roller Girl by Dire Straits and one other that now slipped from my memory
On the serious side Our Donations have gone to International Rescue Committee and Action Against Hunger Though they are part of our monthly donations we double up whenever there are large disasters
Goddess Bless you
Love Desiree
A Question, and a Comment
Dear Angharad,
how you can keep it up every day, is a Wunder to me (is that english or deutsch spelling ? I'm not sure anymore... Getting old and slightly confused, probably.)
One query to you: Lady Catherine called her daughter Trish "Trish Watts" - is she not a Cameron too, like her Mummy?
Now the comment. I noticed the danger of corrugated iron roofs in high winds a few years back. It was around New Year, at the same time as the great Tsunami hit Indonesia and Malaysia, our wee Scottish island was hit by what we now call "The Great Storm" - hardly a house in the whole Island was left undamaged - I lost only a quarter of the tiles on my roof, but some places lost their entire roof. We lost 5 people too, they felt that their house was going to be damaged so got into a car and tried to make for a relative's house somewhat less exposed, but as they were driving over a causeway they were blown into the sea and drowned. Our casualty total, 5 humans, and several hundred sheep, should be seen in the light of our population, about 700 of each. We lost a far larger % of our population than they did in SE Asia, but we only made a short paragraph in the papers the next day. On that next day I madly went out, with a hard hat and lots of protective gear and a camera, and saw among many startling and scary things, a piece of corrugated iron doing aerobatics in the still strong wind. Suddenly it twisted and shot downwards with force, slicing into the soft, peaty ground to about half its length, just a few feet from me. I decided it was too dangerous outdoors after that and hurried home, with the wind behind me, in steps that were 3 yards long with the wind lifting me so all I had to do was try to stay upright. Along the local beach, the breakers were higher than a double decker bus. The coastguard were trying to set up a signpost warning people to keep away from it.
The entire population went into a deep depression after this event, and it was not until the new lambs began to appear that we started to smile again. There were Meetings afterwards, about Measures to Avoid Flooding and Coastal Erosion, but alas nothing really effective happenened afterwards. A few bits of cloth attached to posts in the dunes was supposed to keep the sand in there, and a loose wall of big stones were put along the top edge of the Machair, in the hope that it would stop the waves coming over and wrecking the pasture. I was walking along that part a few weeks back, and the "wall" is now scattered over the field, by lesser, later storms.
I have lived here eleven years now, and in that time we have lost nearly ten percent of the land area. Nobody can get House Insurance, the risk is too great. The sea level is rising, the land is sinking, the winds get stronger, and there are now lots of windmills built, but the electricity is taken under the sea to the Mainland and then exported to Germany - we get very little of it. And still there are those that question "Global Warming". Not hereabouts are there such, we experience it all the time.
Briar
Would be interesting
to find out if Siân (see Ang i do learn :-) did indeed meet the curate, No doubt it would be a very one sided contest, Siân probably played rugby at uni (well she is welsh )and if she did she would no doubt be accquainted with some of the more nefarious dark arts of the scrum... Somehow you feel if the curate had played sport it would have been something like Cricket which is quite often called a gentlemans game, Something which our curate is most definitely not..
Kirri