The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2520 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad

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“Before I came to work here I thought life in a university was a doddle,” Delia informed me.

“You mean, this isn’t?” I asked in response hoping it sounded incredulous.

“No, it’s quite hard work.”

“Who am I to disagree?”

“Are you taking the piss, Professor?” Her response caught me entirely off guard and just swallowing a sip of tea. I coughed for several minutes while she walked away with an expression and body language which said, ‘serve you right.’

Despite my near demise from drowning in my own cuppa, we managed to shift quite a bit of stuff from my desk to someone else’s, including the environment agency, Natural England, the mammal survey data group and so on.

Tom took us both to lunch and spent much of the time complaining that his desk filled with paper faster than he could shift it. Delia was going to say something when I managed to stop her. He’s a wily old bird and if we’d suggested we’d cleared much of ours, he’d have dumped some on us.

For a complete change I had a jacket potato with some fish in mayonnaise and a side salad. Delia had ham salad with chips as her side order, Daddy had—you know that anyway.

Tom and I listened as Delia related how as a child she’d always wanted a pony but her parents weren’t rich enough to buy her one. So she started helping out at a riding stables and in return for mucking out, she got the odd ride. Nothing new there, lots of girls do it and the odd boy. She went on to describe how one of the boys occasionally looked a bit less boy than usual. Seems he let his hair grow longer than was fashionable and once or twice she thought she detected hints that he’d been wearing eye makeup or nail varnish.

Then one day, while he was mucking out wearing gum boots, one of the horses, a big stallion, stepped on the unfortunate boy’s foot. He yelled as the ton of cat food damaged his digits but he didn’t want the owner of the stables to look at his foot. She insisted they went to the local hospital and Delia went along to help despite his protests. Transpired, the irascible equine had fractured some of the boy’s toes which apart from turning a lovely shade of purple had nails which were painted a glossy deep red. No one said anything, the doctor, the stables owner or Delia—least not then.

The woman ran him home from hospital and Delia made a note of his address and the next day she sent him a rather girly get well card. The following weekend she went to visit him, to see how he was and if she could find the nerve, ask him why he was wearing nail varnish on his toes. She wasn’t put off, rather it intrigued her, as only glam rock stars or drag artists wore makeup, he was neither—as far as she knew.

“Sae whit happened?” asked Tom pausing with a fork of chicken curry in mid air.

“His mum left us to talk and I asked him. He said he liked to dress up as a girl sometimes.”

“What did you think of that?” I enquired.

“Nothing much, I just told him I did too, perhaps we could do it together some time.”

“Did you?”

“Oh yeah, his mum was okay with it, so we’d dress up a couple of times a week and do our homework.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About three years, I suppose. It got kinda boring after a bit. He was very nice, but he preferred being Sheila to Sean. I occasionally wanted to go out with a boy.”

I think we both understood her viewpoint which while sympathetic, showed she also wanted something from the relationship, which was a boyfriend not a pseudo girlfriend. We finished our meal and went back to the university.

I wasn’t sure why she’d suddenly divulged this tale and when she arrived bearing mugs of tea, I asked her.

“Oh that? I was thinking about Christmas and all the presents I used to wish for.”

“Did you ever get the ones you asked for?”

“Except the pony, yeah, lots of things. Did you?”

I withdrew the last two mince pies from my desk drawer and we sat and munched them with our teas. “I always wanted a tea set, but never got one,” I related.

“Why? I had two of them.”

“My father said something about preferring I had books than toys.”

“I can see why you’re a professor and I’m not.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked out to be.”

“It pays better than temping.”

I had no sensible reply to that so said nothing.

“I saw Sheila, a few weeks ago.”

“Sorry?”

“My girly boyfriend, Sheila, I saw her a few weeks ago.”

“Oh?”

“She was working in Sainsbury’s.”

“She?”

“Yeah, she changed over. Her mum was supportive but her dad didn’t like it. She was the delicatessen manager.”

“Good for Sainsbury’s—supporting her, I mean.”

“Oh yeah. I said we could go for a drink some time, she was going to call me, she hasn’t yet.”

“Why don’t you call her then?”

“I could I suppose. Am I strange, meeting up with a girl who used to be a boy?”

“Do you meet up with other girls?”

“Yeah, course.”

“So what’s one more girl friend?”

She looked at me for a moment obviously thinking about what I’d said. “You’re right, I’ll go and phone her.”

“It’s not what she was that’s important, but who she is now.”

“I can see why you’re a professor, Professor.”

“Can you, damned if I can.”

She took out the dirty cups and chuckled as she left the room. Tempting as it was to go shopping in Sainsbury’s, I resisted the urge and instead collected an army of children from the convent and took them home.

Delia was working Monday and Tuesday, I was going to go in and check the dormice those two days and pop and see if she needed any letters signed. Otherwise, I was about to start my Christmas holidays—whoopee doo. I had presents to wrap, still one or two to procure plus all sorts of Christmas stuff to do.

Back at home I spoke to David and casually asked what he had planned for Christmas. “Apart from cooking your dinner—nothing, why?”

“Ingrid not got anything lined up for you and Hannah?”

“They left three weeks ago.”

“Oh my goodness, I am sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Her car has been gone for weeks.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Obviously.”

“You must have dinner with us, you’re part of the family, after all.”

“Mind if I see how I feel?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry this has happened.”

“We got bored with each other and perhaps in the end I wasn’t man enough for her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I.”