The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2526 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad

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Christmas was fast approaching and I had to mobilise the troops. Jacquie and I managed to manhandle the tree in place using a pot mover—a triangular thing with castors on it. Liv and Trish got the plastic sheet down and thankfully the large saucer in which it sits was relatively free of snails and woodlice. I did give it some extra water and charged the three girls with decorating it—Danni going up to the attic to get the baubles and lights. Jacquie and Meems hung up various other decorations and I dashed off with Cate to do some last minute shopping.

Sammi would be home this afternoon, it will be good to see her. I began to think she was getting ready to fly the nest, but not just yet. It’s crazy, she’s been post op less than the others, yet she’s the one who has all the boyfriends, though none seem to hang around once she starts talking about settling down. Least I hope that’s they go not because of something else, if you get my drift. She’s a really beautiful girl, with a cracking figure, so she shouldn’t be short of admirers.

Mind you Julie is very pretty and she can’t keep a boy either. Perhaps they didn’t learn that part of courtship, my two elder girls, how to retain a boy’s interest. In which case, perhaps I need to find a tutor for them, if there is such a thing. I’m no help, Simon wasn’t exactly difficult to attract and he’s stuck to me like chewing gum ever since, I really don’t know why, as he must have been one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. I don’t know why he found me attractive let alone fell in love with me, but that’s what happened and I fell in love with him not long after. That he knows about my past and says it doesn’t matter, is extraordinary. But then Simon is one in several million.

I rushed round the shops dragging Cate in my wake, not quite, I dashed about using her pushchair as a battering ram to get through crowds who stop to have conferences in the middle of pavements or aisles in shops.

Have you noticed how drivers just ignore no entry signs or large arrows painted on the roads in shop carparks. Some idiot bloke tried to run me over as I crossed a car park, he’d come through a no entry sign and was against the flow of traffic but it didn’t concern him or seemingly when I swore at him and called him a dickhead.

Personally, people who drive like that should be made to undergo another driving test and not allowed to drive by themselves until they pass the test again. On the way home, we got cut up by some creep in a—four by four who pushed past regardless of space available. It was only because I didn’t want to damage my vehicle, that I let him go, plus, I had Cate in the back of the car and I didn’t want her hurt by some moronic motorist.

Shopping over, we rushed home and ate the baguettes David had made for us with salmon and cucumber, but they were masterpieces and I was hungry. Cate tore into hers as well then spat it out because the crust was hard. Kiki did quite well out of her throwing food on the floor, which she continued to do despite my telling her to stop. In the end, I smacked her because she was wilfully ignoring me. Amazingly, after a tap on her leg she behaved herself a little more and she ate her roll properly. Unsurprisingly the dog seemed disappointed.

I didn’t hear Sammi arrive as I was pushing a vacuum cleaner about and humping furniture out of the way to clean under it. She patted me on the shoulder and I jumped out of my skin, switched off the Dyson and we laughed as we hugged and kissed each other. It was funny that while she was up in London this time, I tried not to think about her too much because I worry. Now she was with me again, I felt such joy and relief—she was safe and home again. My family was complete, such as it was.

She went and changed and I finished my vacuuming, then we settled down with a cuppa for a good old chinwag.

At four, Julie and Phoebe arrived and Simon who’d stopped off at some shops somewhere to get a few last minute things.

David did sausage and mash for dinner. Did I mention that we got a potato peeling machine for him which allowed him more time to prepare meals rather than potatoes. He still had to de-eye them, but that only took a fraction of the time that peeling did.

Everyone tucked into the meal with peas and onion gravy—that guaranteed some sound effects in bed from Simon, but it was okay, I’d bought a gas mask from ebay. I didn’t plan on sleeping in it, just making him aware of the other side of the flatulence line.

The girls needed some help to finish the tree so Sammi went to assist them. Si showed me the laptop he’d brought for David which Sammi had agreed to set up for him. We have fibre-optic broadband so if he wanted to, he could use our wi-fi to get on the internet.

Mima helped me put up the cards on ribbons and then it was time to send them to bed. I took them and read them a chapter or two of a Gaby story and they went off to sleep quite quickly. They’d all worked like Trojans, so I suspect they were quite tired.

I noticed Sammi, Julie and Phoebe were absent and upon enquiring, discovered they were wrapping Christmas presents from Simon to everyone else. Effectively they were wrapping each others. I wished I’d thought of that, I did my own. Simon always manages to wriggle out of things—except, tomorrow, I told him we needed some logs sawn—and he’s the strongest in the family, so he gets the job. He wasn’t exactly pleased, and his previous helpmates, Danny or Leon, were indisposed. Leon was still in the army somewhere and Danny had succumbed to a large dose of oestrogens and become his daughter Danielle. She was still up for things, but she’d lost quite a bit of muscle mass so I wasn’t having her hurting herself to save him a bit of exercise. Hopefully, it would do him good, we did have both a chainsaw and circular saw embedded in a table, plus of course a bow saw and a felling axe.

Danni could help him collect up the sawn or chopped logs but she wasn’t to carry anything too heavy—last thing we needed was a prolapsed or other injury.

Julie and Sammi were going to help David in the kitchen and Daddy and I were going to slip up to the cemetery with the flowers I had stored in the shed, to keep them cool. It was part of our annual ritual and I hoped one day I might catch sight of Billie again. Sometimes I think I feel her around but I’m not sure.

Perhaps Trish will walk with us.