The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2628 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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Phoebe eventually went off leaving me feeling totally shattered. She was at risk of breast cancer but what happened depended upon what she did about it. If she had regular exams, it reduced the risk dramatically. She needed to have children then think about possibly have oophorectomies and hysterectomies and breast removal and reconstruction; based upon risk. I got the impression that she had quite a few years to decide upon having children and so on, but first she had to meet someone she wanted to spend her life with and at seventeen, it’s a bit premature in my mind but I might just be old fashioned.

Simon asked me what was going on but I told him I was too tired to discuss it and went to bed. He followed me asking again what was going on with Phoebe and as he was nominally her other parent, I told him. Initially he was alarmed by the news of the cancer gene, which was why I didn’t want to talk about it. He did calm down when I told him, it wasn’t an immediate problem.

He eventually allowed me to go to sleep after I stopped responding to his questions by pretending to already be asleep. I didn’t sleep that well because I kept seeing Phoebe anguishing about her possible cancer risk. Ironically, she told me she slept really well after our session together. Simon also slept like a corpse, barely moving until he woke which was about the time I was going off to sleep. I managed two hours before Messrs Humphrys and Naughtie woke me talking about earthquakes in Nepal and the election. A silly thought went through my mind, China being a one party state, doesn’t have elections just erections—I did say it was silly.

I began to think that elections here were becoming as crazy as they were in America with huge amounts of money spent before electioneering proper began. We’ve had nearly a year of the phony election now it’s the real thing, and d’you know what? I can’t tell the difference except Dave the chameleon wears a blue tie more often.

I emerged from the shower, the death toll in Nepal was rising—given the poverty there, it’s hardly surprising plus it will take days to get to remote communities who may have been decimated.

After dressing, I roused the girls and waited to help with their hair only to be told they’d do each others. I warned them no silliness and went to start breakfast. They arrived half an hour later each with hair in plaits. As it was quite well done I allowed it. Seeing Danni with plaited hair surprised me, but it was obviously long enough to do, showing how much it had grown in the previous eighteen months with help from oestrogen. Her hair wasn’t the only thing that was growing. She was about half an inch taller, but her body was developing in a very curvaceous manner, her hips broadening as her waist shrank—and she eats like horse.

Phoebe came down and hugged me, thanking me for listening to her the night before. She thought she had things in perspective now and for the moment was going to concentrate on developing the business with Julie—who looked relieved to hear it.

The two of them went off in Julie’s Smart car and ten minutes later I stuffed the car full of schoolgirls and we left for St Claire’s. Sister Maria grabbed me and asked if I was okay because I didn’t look so good. I checked in my compact mirror and certainly, I had dark rings under my eyes. Alas I had too much to do in my office to be able to go back to bed.

Delia met me with two newspaper articles she’d seen, one on Bruce Jenner telling the world he was a woman—seeing as we’ve known about it for months, I ignored it. The second was some awful story about a transsexual woman who was beaten up by police who also cut her hair off. The pictures showed her before and after, the contrast was enough to make you want to heave. No one deserves to be beaten like that. The full body pictures of her in a bra and thong outfit were a bit OTT, tending to suggest she’d had more plastic surgery than Sylvester Stallone’s mother as she resembled an almost caricature of an extreme female body-shape with tiny liposuctioned waist and huge implant assisted hips and bum matching the extravagant breasts and enhanced lips.

It reminded me that in South America women save for plastic surgery from puberty to enhance this or reduce that, spending thousands of pounds every year to have various bits altered to meet stereotypes of how sexy women should look. I found it frightening as well as sad verging on pathetic. What happens to the women who can’t afford the surgery or don’t want it for whatever reason? Are they left on the sidelines in the boyfriend or husband stakes? It seems like an epidemic is happening worldwide with young women all over the world feeling they have to conform to one or two basic shaped patterns to be seen as desirable, either voluptuous or stick insect thin. Crazy as most women are in between the two, which includes me.

I’ve never understood why supermodels are six feet two and built like bean poles when most women are about five feet five or six and a size twelve or fourteen. They have very little in common at all, mind you neither do the clothes they model as far as the high street is concerned. There, at the top end, if the Duchess of Cambridge is seen wearing something from a chain store, they’re sold out in minutes.

Delia appeared with coffee and an armful of papers to read or sign. “What did you think of the stories?” she asked me.

“They were both outrageous in their own way, but the one seemed full of the privileged classes being able to do what they want—tell that to the black transgendered sex workers in the red light districts of New York or Chicago, many of whom will never live to save enough for SRS because disease or violence is likely to get them first, or their drug habits.

“The other was outrageous insofar as it showed what happens when you have too much power vested in the forces of oppression as they believe they can get away with it. The same is true in places like Afghanistan or other fundamentalist countries.”

“Oh okay, I suppose that’s what happens when you ask a professor a simple question, you get an exposition.”

“Serves you right.”

“I have another.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“Can I come dormouse counting with you when the season starts?”

That caught me unawares. It’s meant to be for undergraduates to give them a chance to participate in a field survey, but we do relax it to allow interested others to help including my own children at times.

“Um, yeah course you can. Tell Graham, he’s doing most of the organising.”

“Cool, I will—and thank you.”

“What for?”

“Letting me participate.”

“You work here, so why not? I’m sure it’s covered in the constitution for equal rights for all.”

“I can’t wait to tell my mum I saw a dormouse in the wild.”

“If I’m on the survey, you’ll get a chance to do more than see one, you’ll have a chance to handle one as well.”

“Oh wow, that is like totally fab.”

“If only everyone were so easily pleased.”