The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1592 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I was asleep by the time Simon came to bed–I have no idea what he was doing in the bathroom, but it took him long enough for me to finish my chapter and nod off. I can’t honestly say I was aware of him getting on the bed either, usually I am, so I must have really gone off.

The next morning, which by the way came round far too quickly, I woke to find Trish standing alongside me saying she had a tummy ache. It took a moment for me to really wake up and stagger to the bathroom with her where she was promptly sick and then had diarrhoea–just managing to sit on the loo–unfortunately before she got her knickers off. I might not have felt sick beforehand but I certainly did after I’d undressed her and shoved her in the shower quickly because I didn’t want her to get a urinary infection.

She was sick in the shower and again while I was trying to dry her. I took her back to her bed with a bucket and she sat rather than lay down in case she was sick again. I got the other two washed and dressed and to school, but midway through the morning I had to go and collect Livvie who was being sick, I got Mima while I was at it and sure enough by tea time she was being sick too.

Danny was the next casualty, before we found that the hospital had closed two wards because of the Noro virus–one of these nasty sickness and diarrhoea bugs which is usually caught from touching infected door handles but can also be airborne.

I let Simon know and he opted to stay at the hotel whence Stella had fled with her two littlies and Catherine. The latest from her was they were okay. I was washing everything down with antiseptic and hoping it missed me. Somehow it did, though it got Tom and he spent a very uncomfortable two days feeling quite rough.

I emailed Julie only to find it was her ward which had it and of course the children had been handing foodstuffs in the hospital. Oh boy. I nearly wore the washing machine out doing changes of clothing and bedding; so why didn’t catch it was astonishing–I did wear my Marigolds to do the bed changing or mopping up sick or poo and I was sick once, but that was just at the smell of it not because I had the virus.

The big danger for Julie was dehydration if she caught it, but possibly because she wasn’t eating anything, she escaped-the only one on the ward: she was also the youngest, which could have been a factor too.

I ate very little for the next day or two because the smell of disinfectant and vomit did little to act as an appetiser, rather the opposite. I’d contacted the university and my classes were cancelled, although I emailed them some background reading to give my students. Apparently, on the first day they showed a DVD of the dormouse film, the second they gave out the reading list.

So, despite the fact that I didn’t actually succumb to the dreaded virus, I stayed home in case I was infectious. The next week, we were all back to normal and I was to collect Julie to bring her home as soon as she could pass urine. I phoned at lunch time and she hadn’t managed it, despite them shoving loads of fluid down her and the catheter being out some three hours.

I waited until I collected the girls before I called again, this time on my mobile and Julie had weed. We all went to collect her, the girls staying in the locked car until I brought Julie back to them. There was much cheering and kissing and she sat very carefully in the front seat of the Jaguar despite the very soft cushion I’d placed on the seat. I smirked not because I thought it funny but because it reminded me of how I must have looked when I was collected.

“You comin’ for a bike ride?” Trish asked her elder sibling.

“Yeah, but only because I’d doing a triathlon tomorrow,” responded big sister much to the amusement of the other two. I asked them if they knew what it was and they didn’t so Julie got to explain once I’d hushed Trish. I knew one thing, I’d never make a triathlete because I was too poor at swimming.

Julie hadn’t managed to see Caroline, which had annoyed her. Caroline had been discharged the day before she was able to go and see her. They did however talk by phone and apparently Julie agreed to go and see Caroline in Bristol when she was driving again. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it, but at eighteen, Julie was considered an adult by the law, even if I thought she was a bit naíve. Considering the abuses she’d suffered, Julie was remarkably unaffected by them, which I think contributed to her charm as an ingénue. She was also becoming a very attractive young woman with a delightful figure–or would be once she gained a bit of weight again on her breasts.

At home she teased Trish about having the virus, saying it was a judgment for being horrid to her while she was in hospital. I didn’t hear about it until several days later but apparently, for all her bravado about beliefs and things, Trish really did wonder if Jesus had punished her for being a naughty girl. Tempting though it was to try and maintain it and her better behaviour, I felt obliged to tell her I thought it was a nonsense, and the infection was much more due to bad luck than anything else–well, that and poor hygiene in the hospital by staff or visitors and or the children themselves.

Trish then convinced herself that the old woman who gave her the grapes was a witch or a murderess, who had tried to kill her with poisoned grapes. Perhaps it would have been better leaving the blame on the supernatural.

Simon, Stella and the babies at the hotel were fine, except the night he got food poisoning–not from the hotel food but a sandwich he bought at the motorway services–a tuna one. He told me he’d never eat the stuff again, which was a pity because I was doing tuna jackets–I told him he’d have to have trousers instead. He failed to see the funny side of it though Trish thought it was hilarious–or she’s finally flipped from genius into insanity–presumably not, though insanitary might have applied to her when she went down with the tummy bug.

I got back to my teaching and somehow stuck with the two huge classes I’d started with, something which had been unheard of before. I actually did a questionnaire to ask why people were enrolling for it and it appeared that the majority who were young women thought they’d like to present a TV programme or to make one and become instantly rich and famous. I did point out that they needed to get some years of learning in first so they could direct and script as well as narrate such a programme–they couldn’t seem to understand that bit.