The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2630 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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Where does the time go? It was barely the weekend with Danielle again scoring twice in her ladies soccer game and Trish wanting equipment to split the atom and we were half way through the next. Could it actually be just one more week before polling day, the opportunity to vote I would take as if my life depended up on it. I think back to those who risked or sacrificed their lives to gain universal adult suffrage and feel not to vote disrespects them. Voting should be compulsory here as it is in a number of countries. Not voting is stupid. People should be engaged with politics and casting a vote at general elections is the only way to have a say in the government of the day. For those who think their vote is irrelevant or a waste of time, I tend to think of the old rhyme for the want of a nail.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Having alienated myself from millions of my fellow countrymen, at least in spirit, I arrived at the school and collected a car load of grumbling schoolgirls. Trish was unhappy that she was expected to play tennis, whereas Livvie was pleased to be able to play it, and Danni was allowed to do circuit training to maintain her fitness as a footballer—an England footballer.

She is rather special as are her soccer skills, Trish is pretty good too except she still feels embarrassed by her abilities, feeling they expose her past as a boy when she refused to play the game—ironic or what? Meems is not one bit interested in any sport, she’d rather play with her dollies than a ball of any sort. Cate is signed up for nursery and Puddin’ goes to a small school near the hospital because Stella can take her and Fiona there.

I’d have thought the obvious solution would have been to have all the girls in one school and arrange a minibus each way every school day. Stella seemed perturbed that my kids might appear brighter than hers. I jokingly passed it off as proving the outcome of inbreeding among the upper classes, but she didn’t find it very funny. Dunno why.

The contest for vice chancellor was hotting up. One or two of my colleagues wanted me to do it, even Tom wasn’t against it, but I was even when they suggested a salary of over two hundred thousand pounds. It might be the going rate but I considered it obscene. When I asked Tom about his tenure as dean, he gave me a very cryptic answer which when I sat down and tried to decode, implied he was only doing it to enable me to gain experience as a professor so I could move on to greater things. I presumed he meant Sussex.

There was a rumour that Oxford was expecting to have a vacancy for a professor of mammalian biology and London was thinking of creating a chair of ecology and field biology. It’s all very well if you don’t have a dozen kids to look after but I do so any jobs involving extra hours weren’t really welcome. Even when Simon primed the girls to tell me to go for these more influential jobs, aided and abetted by Tom, I stood my ground and after a bit of a discussion, they all agreed with me. They wanted a mother not housekeepers, however efficient they were and Lorraine and Helen were efficient and likeable.

While tidying one day, Helen found a photo of the girls with Jenny our old nanny who I eventually dismissed for trying to extort money under false pretences. She jumped off a motorway bridge and lived to tell the tale, though had persistent back problems for which she was using cannabis. I told Helen all about her and Caroline a tg helper I employed who Jenny decided to manipulate causing her to revert to her male status before chucking her. Caroline was hurt in a RTA and on recovering had a row with me and walked off in high dudgeon having got hold of the completely wrong end of the stick.

“Why did you employ someone like that when you could have had a normal woman working for you?”

“She needed the job and I needed some support in the house.”

“This was before David came?”

“Oh yes, quite a few years ago now.”

“You’re such a good employer, I can’t believe any one willingly left here.”

“They did but only after an up and downer, which was all a misunderstanding. I could see that Jenny was manipulating her, but Caroline couldn’t see it at all, accused me of having had a downer on Jenny—she had stolen some of my property—and resigned, or rather stormed off in a huff.”

“Silly girl,” observed Helen.

I agreed but these things happen. David made us a delicious game pie for dinner. I didn’t ask too closely as to what was actually in it expecting to hear, Bambi, a pheasant, rabbit or hare and so on. Trish who was starving, or so she said asked what was in game pie and David told her a rugby player, a soccer player, a tennis star and a golfer. The look on Trish’s face was priceless. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she chided David who took it in good humour before telling her it was ‘game pie.’

Trish knows quite a lot of things but at times she shows her inexperience or naïveté. I sometimes have to remember that Trish is still only ten years old and sometimes has no sense of humour.