The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2318 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I felt quite excited about seeing Le Grand Départ as they were calling it, though it was too late for me to volunteer to help marshal it. Oh well, can’t have everything. It would be brilliant to see Cavendish take the first stage and would Froome be able to win it again—that would be three times in a row for the Brits. Just like buses, you wait years for one and then three come along together.

I blushed, I hadn’t taken a bus since I was a student and I’ve still got the umbrella that kindly driver gave me when I caught one during the summer storm. If I remember correctly, it was slightly broken on one or two of the ribs—they’d come off the fabric of the brolly and I managed to fix them back in and sew the eyelets in them back to the fabric. It was probably a nicer umbrella than it looked.

Goodness, when I think of how far I’d come since that day, or the few before it when Stella knocked me into a parallel universe where it was okay for me to be female. How much she, Simon and Tom had done for me and I hoped I’d repaid to an extent.

I shook myself and tried to deal with the issues of the day. I felt sad when I heard the Bob Geldoff’s daughter had died aged twenty five. I’d never met her but I felt that given her history of drugs and sadness—she lost her own mother when she was eleven—it seemed doubly sad that just when she should be settling down for the sake of her children, she suddenly died and at present, they don’t know why. Apparently, some of these sudden death things can be very difficult to determine. A very pretty girl whose life seemed to be snuffed out as it was blossoming, and I thought I had things to complain about.

We never know what’s coming to us or for us, do we? Perhaps that was just as well, would we want to live if we knew we were to die horribly? Ugh, move on to more pleasant things. What am I going to do with the children today? I have no idea.

While I was in this undecided mood, the phone rang, it was the architect of the study centre, Billie’s centre. He invited me to come and see the progress they’d made now it wasn’t actually raining twenty four seven. I should have taken more interest in this project, but I felt so overwhelmed recently by life that I’d delegated things to an assistant. Remember Dan, yeah the technician who posted that clip on youtube? Well he’d returned from Southampton and I’d managed to get him to take on the job of project manager for the centre. Then if we could get away with it, I wanted him to run the centre for me as the effective operational manager while I retained the role of director—setting the policy and overall activities of the centre.

It was to be primarily an ecology centre but would also run some breeding programmes. This would mean that we would do things like organise ecology trips for local schools and other bodies like local naturalists’ trusts and charities. There was going to be a strong link with the university so we’d have undergrads and post grads doing research here, obviously in small numbers and I would supervise them up to bachelor and masters level. In time I might even take on doctoral supervision but probably only on the field element of the degree.

I had four girls to accompany me, Stella had agreed to watch Cate and Jacquie was taking Lizzie out for a couple of hours. Stella had a few days off from her nursing and although she had some reading to do, she was happy to spend a couple of hours looking after her two and my youngest. Phoebe, who as Lizzie’s closest relative seemed to have little desire to look after her and was far more interested in helping Julie in the salon and thus practicing the skills she was acquiring at the college, she only had one term left before she qualified and was certainly going to push the business element of things.

I dressed appropriately for a wander in the woods/ building site in jeans and walking boots and then helping the girls to choose something equally suitable. I wasn’t sure if Danni was up to it but she wanted to see what was happening at Billie’s centre. Once they’d all shoved their wellies in plastic bags in the boot of the Jaguar we set off. Despite it being school holidays the traffic was fairly light and we got to the forest earlier than I expected, however, the architect a John Ronson, was early as well. I presume when he saw a white XF arrive he assumed it was ol’ money-bags herself, and he was spot on, it was me.

I pulled on my walking boots and gaiters, promising the girls a walk in the woods if Danni was up to it, and waited while they pulled on extra socks and their wellington boots—not the best thing for walking any distance in but pretty standard fare for dealing with muddy paths and leaf mould.

Mr Ronson introduced himself and we shook hands and I then introduced my daughters and he shook hands with each one, Meems stealing the day by scrambling his name in her customary way. She blushed but looked so innocent she stole my heart and I knew what a little monster she can be.

As we entered the site a woodpecker drummed nearby and I hoped we might see it on our walk—I told the girls to watch out for a bird with undulating flight and demonstrated what I meant with my hand.

Out guided tour showed that the walls were completed and the roof was being finished. Next they’d secure the building by either inserting the windows or boarding them up while things like plumbing and electrics were done then the walls would be plastered and fittings and fixtures would be added. He suggested they’d nearly caught up with the delays through the weather—and the tree which collapsed on the one wall during the gales of Valentine’s Day. A few more trees had been removed to reduce the risk of further damage and while I was saddened by the loss of what would probably have been healthy trees, I appreciated the dangers of building too close to them. On a whim I asked if we couldn’t put a beech hedge round the car park which would give an extra area of potential nesting places for smaller birds like thrushes, once it grew a few feet. He beamed and agreed it was a good idea. They were going to put nest boxes up all over the place once it was finished and we’d have loads put up in the woodland as the centre developed—hopefully getting volunteers from conservation bodies to help in providing the manpower to do so.

It was interesting that some of the rooms seemed larger than when I’d seen them on paper and others seemed smaller. My office was bigger than I thought it would be, and the library smaller. I suggested they switch them round but Ronson explained the reason for a large director’s office was that when not in use by said director it would function as a meeting room, provision for security of files and equipment being included in the design.

The lab areas looked very good as did the study rooms and the multipurpose room which we’d use for teaching groups. We spent a good hour looking round the place and another hour tramping round the woods. The woodpecker turned out to be a male great spotted variety, which we saw as we returned to the car from our woodland trek. Danni was beginning to tire somewhat but she’d enjoyed the fresh air.

As we were about to get back into the car, I mumbled to myself that Billie would have been proud of what we were doing in her name. “Oh she is,” observed Trish.

“What? You saw her?”

“Oh yes, Mummy, she walked round with us, she thinks it’s wonderful.”

I felt sad as I shut the door and started the car up to drive home.