The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2306 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The bossman invited us to lunch, I almost felt like saying no, but then he’d get upset, even though we have breakfast and dinner together most days, but then he is my adopted faither, so I’d best be a dutiful dochter and go.

“Are ye al richt”, hen?” asked some woman as we took our seats in the pub—our usual one was being refurbished,

“Aye, I am jest braw,” I answered and Hilary’s jaw dropped.

“You’re not a haggis smuggler as well, are you?”

“I blushed, “I might be, why?”

“I know Manchester is full of them, but I’d have thought Portsmouth was too far south for most of them.”

“Whit’s the Sassenach saying?” asked Tom from behind me, he had drinks in his hands but had obviously heard what Hilary had said.

“Is Cathy Scottish?”

“Aye as an Arbroath smokie,” Tom smirked back.

“But she sounds so English.”

“She’s frae Dumfries.”

“Dumfries?”

“Aye whaur Rabi Burns is buried.”

“Oh is it? So should Scotland separate from England?”

“Whit muckled heided scunner thocht o’that idea, he needs his brains biled.” Tom was having fun with our technician.

“What’d he say?” she whispered to me.

“No.”

“Right,” she said nodding.

He laughed and went back to converse in Lallans with the woman at the bar.

“So when did you come down here—I mean you’ve got no accent or anything?”

“I came down here when I was twenty two.”

“So how come you don’t have an accent, like Tam O’Shanter?” she indicated Tom with her thumb.

“I was in Bristol for most of those twenty two years.”

“So you’re English?”

“No, Daddy was right, I was born in Dumfries.”

“Which is Scotland?”

“Very much so.”

“Braveheart an’ all that?”

“Not quite, William Wallace was a bit further north.”

Tom asked about our menu choices. I settled for a tuna jacket and Hilary had a chilli con carne.

“I didn’t realise he was your dad?”

“Who?”

“The prof.”

“He’s my adopted dad, yeah.”

“Don’t you find that a bit difficult, I mean working so close with him?”

“No, should I?”

“Seems a bit of nepotism?”

“Not really, my dad died a couple or so years ago, and Daddy,” I indicated Tom, “had lost his wife and daughter, and we sort of filled a gap in each other’s lives. He sort of needed a daughter and I thought a parent would be handy as both mine were dead.”

“You don’t find that a bit creepy?”

“Creepy? Why? He’s the most wonderful man, kinder to me than my birth father.”

“Oh, just a bit strange to be adopted at twenty two?”

“Hilary, you might have been hunting mountain lions at that age, I was very naïve, and immature, I needed a parent to guide me, Daddy sort of offered and I accepted. I don’t regret it one bit.”

“What does your husband have to say about it?”

“He quite likes it, and as Tom sort of adopted my sister in law as well, it seems to work really well. We all live in his old farmhouse.”

“Wow, so how many of you live there then?”

I counted on my fingers, “ About fifteen, why?”

“Fifteen? How big is the house?”

“I was originally five bedrooms we now have eight plus another I can use as one when necessary.”

“Eight bedrooms? That’s not a house that’s a mansion.”

“It’s quite big since we built the extension.”

“Blimey, how the other half live,” she shook her head in disbelief.

“Look, come for dinner at the weekend and you can meet my girls.”

“Your girls, you sound like Jean Brodie.”

“My girls are the crème de la crème,” I said in an accent that was nowhere near as effective as Maggie Smith’s.

“No boys then?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Gave up after the football team then?”

“Something like that.” I didn’t feel a need to explain why I had so many children or why some of my children were only a few years younger than I was.

“Okay, which day should I come?”

“Sunday at one.”

“Okay, you’ve got a deal, do I need to bring anything?”

“Ainly yersel’,” I said lapsing into Lallans—dunno why.

“You sure you lived in Bristol for twenty years?”

“I did spend three years at Sussex.”

“Don’t they have a good biology department?”

“One of the best.”

“After here, of course,” she smirked.

“Their facilities are better than here.”

“Even with the influence of The Dormouse Queen?”

I glared at her then stuck out my tongue. I do sophisticated very well.

The food arrived and we set about eating it and Tom joined us for his curry—a beef one this time—they’d run out of chicken. The conversation turned to things departmental and Tom asked Hilary how she was settling in.

“Well, Prof, I’ve got this demon boss, or she pretends she is, but really she’s as soft as butter, but I can’t tell her that or she’ll get tough with me.”

“Aye, nivver telt yer boss she’s tae easy on ye.”

“I am here,” I said feeling like the elephant in the room.

“Ooh, goodness, where did you spring from?” gasped Hilary pretending not to have seen me.

“Ha bloody ha.”

We finished lunch and Tom took us back to the university where I did a tutorial with some strugglers, Hilary sat in on it with my agreement and that of the students involved. Same problem as usual, they haven’t done enough basic biology to keep up with a few of the more complicated processes and they don’t seem to have the gumption to go to the library and read up on it or even call up Wikipedia. So that’s what I recommend they do—get off their little bums and work. Once they show willing to do so, I’m prepared to help or delegate someone they can ask for help. As a reader cum senior lecturer, it isn’t my job to teach the basics any more.

“I could help with some of that?” offered Hilary when the offenders had left.

“They come thinking biology is easy, even if they have very little science background. Can’t be too difficult, look at the bimbo on the TV with a dormouse down her bra, if she can do it...and so on. They don’t realise I was doing a doctorate when said dormouse did her rather famous swallow dive.”

“They’re just kids, Cathy.”

“Hilary, they’re in their twenties, they’re here to learn not party. If they can’t make the grade we have no responsibility to wipe noses and arses.”

“I suspect the ones you’ve just spoken with will either buck up or buck off.”

“Too rough, was I?”

“No—well, you could have been a bit more gentle.”

“I have four daughters at home who do more homework than that lot did.”

“Regular slave driver are you?”

“No, the kids are actually quite good, they have a routine and tend to stick to it.”

“I stand corrected.”

“I also encourage them to do it. Three of them are very clever, one exceptionally so.”

“Seeing as they’re your kids, why doesn’t that surprise me?”

I decided not to say anything else, she’d meet them on Sunday and she could make up her own mind. I just hoped she wasn’t too into Quantum Mechanics or she could be bored to death by Trish.