The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2636 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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I wasn’t sure about what I felt, especially about myself. I’d had negative thoughts about Simon or his motives and he was doing something nice for me. Some days I feel that I don’t deserve him, today being one such. I can’t tell him what I was thinking, he’d be horrified or hurt but it grieves me to realise how negative I seem to be at times and about the person I love most in the world. Is life making me this way, or was I always bitter and twisted underneath all that apparent innocence?

Sometimes I think my overarching emotion is anger. Why am I angry? Well obviously at times in response to events, which may or may not, be appropriate. However, there are times when I get angry with no such seeming events to see as the trigger.

After a short time chatting with Simon I went off to do some ironing, I needed to think some of this through. I got the ironing table set up and put some filtered water in the iron, which by the time I sorted what I was going to iron, was hissing nicely. I set to with my mindless task while trying to sort my head out.

What right did I have to feel angry? A recent spat with Simon. The dilemma of career over being a wife and mother. Loss of my daughter, loss of my mother and father. Being born the wrong physical sex or the wrong brain for my body and all the abuse I suffered on account of this. Not being a real woman and not being able to have my own babies. Being deceived by religion, politics and the media. Man’s inhumanity to man. The destruction we’ve wrought on our planet and its other denizens, which religion tells us are here for our benefit. When we’ve made the planet uninhabitable and God doesn’t show up to fix it, we might moderate our arrogance—just in time for our own extinction.

This was getting heavy, so was the iron and I stopped after an hour having done the basketful of mainly shirts and blouses because I felt tired. I didn’t know if the tiredness came from thinking, fretting or ironing. I distributed the clothing I had just ironed making the girls hang up their own stuff—the older ones should have ironed it too. I’m too soft with them much of the time.

I wondered if I’d ever really grieved for my parents, especially my mother. I doubted it. There was so much going on at the time, which is no excuse, though it’s entirely possible that I didn’t need to grieve—wouldn’t that make me hard hearted? I wasn’t sure.

I went to my study and sat pretending to work but in actual fact I was musing on my earlier thoughts. Why was I always so easily riled to anger? Lack of self control. Lack, ha, there’s a laugh, I have no self control whatsoever—if I did, I’d be a stone or two lighter.

“Wotcha doin’, Mummy?” Trish strolled into my study.

“Working, why?”

“You didn’t look as if you were working?” And I wonder why I get angry?

“How do you know I was or wasn’t working.”

“You weren’t swearing.”

“Swearing?”

“Yeah, you’re always swearing at stupid people for not following instructions for the survey.”

I do too, sounds like I’d better watch what I say. It also appears as if my socially inadequate child has more nous than I ever will. “We have someone doing that in the university, I only deal with the disputed ones, or the difficult ones.”

“Like what?”

I grabbed a folder, “Like these,” I opened the folder and showed her my different categories for different events. I handed her one of a dormouse walking into a cafe.

“Was it looking for a teapot to sleep in?”

“As in Alice?”

“Yes,” she grinned.

“I think they were trying to wake it up by dipping it in the teapot.”

“Ugh, that’s cruel.”

“It would be, but at least Dodson knew they hibernated or went torpid. People today only know it because those of us who’ve seen it tell them, or because of Alice.”

“Why did the dormouse go into the cafe?”

“I have no idea, why did the dormouse go into a cafe?”

“No, silly Mummy, why did it?”

“I have no idea how it got there but it was a real sighting because the person who notified us was the chap from the zoo. I can only assume it was disoriented and went to hide in the first place that it could get into.”

“I thought it might have been looking for the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”

“It might have been except it should have gone to Oxford not Lyme Regis.”

“Perhaps it was on its holidays?” offered Trish.

“Yes, that was it I expect.”

She decided I was working and after the banter she got bored and left. I did do some work for the survey but returned to my self analysis for another half an hour before hearing the dinner gong and all pretences at understanding myself were abandoned for the sake of my tummy.

David had created a delicious lasagne and we attended to eating our share of said Italian dish, where the sound of cutlery on plates was the dominant one, showing that we are able to stop talking for a minute or so.

“Mummy said she had a report of a thirsty dormouse going into a cafe in Lyme Regis.”

“That was in the papers,” said Si.

“Didn’t it go to some zoo or other?” asked Sammi.

“Yeah, Paignton, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“It wasn’t just a publicity event was it?”

“Not as far as I’m aware.”

“Yeah, but it’s so far fetched,” argued Julie, “I mean we don’t get ’em coming in for a cut an’ blow dry.”

“Your prices are too dear,” said Trish and if looks could kill, the one Julie gave her should have caused her to spontaneously combust.

“Our prices are very competitive,” Julie said firmly.

“Well Geraldine O’Brien said her mother thought they were a rip off.”

“Oh does she now? Because usually she tells us how reasonable we are.”

“I’m just sayin’ what Geraldine said.”

“Bloody liar,” accused Stella, “

“No I’m not,” said Trish getting ready to abandon ship and run off to her bedroom where the tears would follow.

“Not you, girl, but the blessed woman who’s maligning Julie’s hairdressing business. It’s one of the reasons I gave up running a salon, couldn’t stand people like her.”
The conversation went on for half an hour and we were all wide awake but still friends. I made some tea and after drinking it went back to my survey and my thoughts.