The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2348 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“I see the kid who raised all that money has died,” said Stella as she came into the house with her two wains.

“Oh, I hadn’t seen that—the cancer chap—you mean?”

“Yeah, raised three million, didn’t he?”

“Something like that—I suppose it gave some sort of purpose to an otherwise seemingly pointless death. Nineteen, wasn’t he?”

“Something like that—too young.” She gave Puddin’ a drink and sat Fiona in the high chair before giving her a drink in a small bottle.

“How was life in the zoo, today then?”

“You would not believe how stupid some people are.”

“Try me,” I invited waiting for the hospital equivalent of Ripping Yarns.

“This guy was sent over from A&E, he’d only stuck a pen down his urethra.”

“Would it be silly to ask why?” I wondered if perhaps he didn’t have a breast pocket in his jacket.

“He thought he was weeing too slowly, so he reasoned that if he stretched his urethra he’d pee more quickly.”

“Yeah, I can accept his logic.”

“In which case can you explain why he then shoved a Bic up his doodah and then couldn’t remove it because it became too sore to touch.”

“I was meaning his logic of stretching something he thought was too tight.”

“They do it for people with urethral stenosis, which he didn’t have.”

“Stenosis—a narrowing, isn’t it?”

“Spot on, give the lady a coconut,” said Stella quite loudly and Fi’s bottom lip puckered and she burst into tears. It took her far longer to calm her than it did to upset her—one of the injustices of having kids. It’s like, why does it take twice as long to clear up a mess than it does to make it? Sod’s law, I suppose.

“So what was wrong with him then?”

“Apart from being a total dick head?”

“I meant urologically.”

“Nothing—until he tried using it as pencil case—a sort of Bic in a dick. Hey, that’s quite good,” she said repeating it. I hoped Pud wasn’t listening.

“Putting lead in his pencil, so to speak.”

She groaned, then burst out laughing, “Yes, a good one, Cathy.” I agreed with her but said nothing.

“You know, you’d be surprised how often some idiot does something like that.”

“I can’t imagine doing it, it strikes me as vaguely masochistic.”

“For some of them, I’m sure that’s very true, then his nibmanship was more likely into sexual stimulation.”

“Does that mean he’s likely to do so again?”

“Only if he’s more stupid than I thought.”

“Is there a scale for stupidity?”

“Probably.”

I decided I’d heard enough and changed the subject. “How are the girls coping with the crèche and the nursery?”

“Fine,” she answered very quickly, perhaps too quickly.

“I think they have a nursery at the convent.”

“I work two miles away, Cathy, and if they finish at lunch time I’d be jiggered.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” I agreed. “Have you spoken to Jacquie about looking after Fiona?”

“Why? The nursery at the hospital is okay.”

“It was just an idea.”

“I thought Jacquie was doing that course.”

“She is but she’d have worked round it if you’d paid her.”

“Paid her? She’s family.”

“She’s going to need quite a bit of money to go to university.”

“Well tell Simon to fund her.”

“I suspect she’ll get more sense of achievement if she has to work for the money.”

“What? Are you crazy? If she can spend her time swotting instead of working for money, she’ll get a better degree.”

“That isn’t guaranteed.”

“No, I realise that but if she can spend her time studying, she should do better than if she’s working somewhere as well.”

“I want them all to value money and the best way to make them do that is to make them earn it.”

“That is just so old fashioned.”

“Old fashioned or not, it’s the best way to teach them.”

“You’ll be flogging or hanging them next.”

“I doubt it. I don’t believe in capital punishment.”

“It does tend to sound a bit naff in this day and age. I find it ludicrous that they shoot someone during the arrest then they have to wait until he’s well enough again to hang.”

“Sounds more like the States than here.”

“Oh it was, Cathy. Their sense of justice is based more on retribution than redemption, which I’d always assumed was the object of Christian worship. Instead they kill ‘em. Very Christian.”

“No you’re confusing things, Stella. They’re an old Testament country, eye for an eye and so on.”

“I think you may be right.”

“I am, Stella.”

“Didn’t they have some execution go horribly wrong the other day?”

“Yeah, lethal injection, took the man forty minutes to die so they said in the Guardian.”

“Isn’t that because British companies aren’t allowed to supply the chemicals any more?”

“Something like that, the government wouldn’t grant export licences.”

“How could you live with yourself if you knew the components you were supplying were used to cold bloodedly kill someone?”

“I couldn’t,” I replied knowing I’d killed several times. I seemed to be able to hold double standards quite comfortably ever since, though I did dream about things for a while after it happened. Did that make me as bad as some American governors?

In some ways, I hoped the lives I’d saved were some redemption for those I’d taken, sort of redressing the balance, but I wasn’t sure how the system worked. Perhaps it was as my reductionist self ultimately believed, and there was nothing sacred about life and it was purely a cosmic accident which had developed its own momentum once it took off coping with extinctions and creating new formulae as it went along. Ultimately, life here is doomed because the sun is and without our sun, life would be very difficult if not impossible. But it wouldn’t be the eternal winter which would sterilise the planet but the turning of the sun into a red giant which would probably expand beyond the area of the orbit of the earth and scorch everything within range. It’s not expected for about five billion years, so I haven’t cancelled the papers.

“Cathy, I was talking to you,” said Stella angrily.

“Sorry, I was miles away.”

“That much was obvious.”

I shrugged.

“What were you thinking about?”

“The end of days.”

“What, Judgement Day?”

“Rather more fundamental than that.”

“Okay, I’ll buy it.”

“I was thinking about what will happen when the sun goes into its terminal cycle having burnt up all its hydrogen.”

“Why?”

“Dunno, just flitted through my brain.”

“So what will happen?”

“The sun will get up to two hundred and fifty times larger.”

“Wow, things will get a bit warm here then.”

“Life will have been extinct here long before that, the seas and atmosphere will have burnt off long before.”

“So how will you save your dormice?”

“Stella, dormice could become extinct in the next hundred years, so I’m not going to worry about five billion years away.”

“Oh well if it’s that far away, I can start watching reruns of Downton Abbey, then, can’t I?”

I cringed and she smirked, knowing I hate the total nonsense it is.