The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2694 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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It’s very easy to get sentimental about nature; see the fox as the villain because we all know hedgehogs are great fun, who never do any harm and so forth. The reality of course is that foxes are predators with no natural enemies except man—and let’s face it, we’re the enemy of almost every other living species. Anyway, back to Vulpes vulpes, the red fox, top end predatory omnivore, loosely related to domestic dogs and like them happy to hunt or eat vegetable material. When hunting is poor they eat berries and earthworms. They’re also opportunist scavengers eating roadkill or human rubbish.

The poor hedgehog didn’t have a chance, the fox tearing off the skin—the bits we saw with the quills still attached. Have to make sure we keep Bramble in at night. She’s a relatively small cat, about the size of a rabbit and if Brer Fox is about at night, she might not be clever enough to avoid him. Mind you, the risk of a fox taking a cat is small according to the experts, including Stephen Harris from Bristol University who’s a leading expert on urban foxes, and a veterinary surgeon who blogged about injuries to domestic cats thought to be from fox attacks.

I added a mention of the hedgehog death to our data base and left it at that. The school finished at three so I left the office early to go and collect them. Delia will still be working for me until the end of August, so she’ll keep me informed of any need for me to pop in to deal with matters. She’ll email me some of the stuff I can deal with at home plus of course, the data from the survey keeps accumulating despite my increasing the help I had there.

I’ve heard commercial outfits talking about being a victim of their own success and had always pooh-poohed it, but I suspected that I was now experiencing it myself and possibly had for some while.

Hannah seems to be fitting in with the others really well and is very little trouble. I still find it sad that her own mother couldn’t be bothered to give her a chance to reach her potential. She is so enjoying her new school that she must have been in a minority of one in resenting the arrival of the school holidays. She’s also slowly rebuilding a relationship with David, so it will be interesting to see where that goes.

By the time I got the girls home from school they were like bottles of pop that had been shaken. They rushed up to their rooms and changed out of their school clothes—even though it wasn’t school uniform today—and dashed back down again for a drink and biscuit. I almost withheld the latter because they’d been eating rubbish all afternoon at their various class parties, but as it was just one biscuit, I relented.

I asked if there was any homework they had to do. The answer was yes for all of them. They each had two topics to research and they had to do an essay and show or list the sources of their research. Some of our first year students would be pushed to do that. When I suggested they start doing some of it now, they all protested so I let them off on the proviso they did some for at least an hour a week during the holiday. If they missed a week, they’d do two hours the following one. They protested again but I overruled them. I also said we’d have some away days and Trish asked to go to the castle. Danielle wasn’t in favour of that at all and said so. I expect memories of Alice were still quite strong.

She asked about going to Menorca and I had to admit that sounded better than Stanebury except it would be too hot, so it could be an option during the first week in September or even half term.

David produced a delicious meal for dinner except i rushed mine to watch the highlights of the TdF, Froome was hanging on to the yellow jersey quite comfortably and Simon, Danni and I sat and watched the programme and enjoyed it. Danielle even suggested a bike ride afterwards but I had too much to do, though I did suggest an early one the next day, Saturday.

At eight o’clock we were clipping into our cleats and setting off for an hour’s ride. The roads were quite busy and we passed a handful of caravans heading in to go to Hayling Island which was where we were headed. An hour was a trifle over optimistic and we crawled back after ninety minutes on sore legs as I’d set quite a punishing pace—on the outward journey. The rest of the morning was filled with shopping and household chores because I was determined to watch the TdF live in the afternoon in what looked like an interesting stage.

Who’da thought Steve Cummings would win the stage? But he did, timing his attack perfectly. Froome held onto the yellow but faced challenges from Quintana and Valverde, with poor old Richie Port losing time from a puncture while collecting drinks. Geraint Thomas also lost some time to Contador and dropped to sixth in the GC.

Froome has been facing accusations of doping from some scurrilous elements of the press, though it’s generally believed he’s a clean rider. To everyone’s disgust, some idiot standing by the roadside flung urine in his face as he rode past and shouted, ‘doping’ at him as well. I was horrified to hear this and I wondered what sort of moron would do such a thing, but we seem to be increasingly peopled by lunatics, some of whom are dangerous to wit, the attack on the naval personnel in the US and the stabbing of an old man after a minor shunt on a road in Sussex. He died at the scene.

Talking of Sussex, Trish showed me a clip of a school of smooth hound sharks swimming round a RSPB reserve near Selsey. It was estimated to have had about fifty of the sharks which can grow to a metre and a half and weigh twenty six kilos; hardly a great white, but equally deadly if you’re a crab or a small fish. At least the clip from ITN resisted the temptation to play the theme from Jaws while all the fins were swirling around in the shallow water.

Although we’re so close to the coast, we rarely go to see it or play in it or use it generally. I suppose we take it for granted, it’s always there, so something like our ride and the film of the sharks reminded us—well, okay—me, that it was there and I ought to visit it more often. It’s just I prefer terra firma and woodlands in particular; plus of course dormice don’t swim naturally, though Spike has been known to dive now and again—um...