The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2734 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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“Accident,” I shouted as half a dozen cyclists approached, and I tried to wave them down. Eventually it dawned on them that whilst we were slowing them down and their times would be affected, if they crashed or hit the casualties they’d be even slower.

“What’s happened?” asked a middle-aged gent with a greying beard.

“There’s been a crash and two people are hurt,” I replied.

“I’m a doctor, let’s have a look at them.” I agreed to keep slowing the riders while he helped the casualties.

“Aren’t you going to fix them?” asked Danni quietly.

“No, that old chap knows what he’s about, let’s just keep the rest of them safe,” so for the next half an hour that’s what we did. When it went quiet we went down the hill to see what had happened. Apparently, the air ambulance had been called and a paramedic in a 4x4 was on his way. Once he arrived the doctor told him what was what and went off on his bike, we went off with Carol just as a noisy yellow machine landed in an adjacent field.

“That was an eventful morning,” commented our chauffeuse.

“Something always happens when my mum is about,” quipped Danni before I could stop her.

“Oh, that sounds interesting, do tell,” urged Carol.

Knowing I was less than pleased, Danni related about how I’d helped several people in accidents, such as the one with the tobogganing boys and the fence post. She also told her about the time I was involved in the attempted robbery at the bank and with the help of the other customers disabled the robbers. I’d forgotten all about it.

“And she got into trouble with the police.”

“What for stopping a robbery?”

“No, she left the scene of the crime before the police said she could go.”

“Naughty Cathy,” teased Carol.

“I had two young uns in school who were expecting me to pick them up and I was already late.”

“Couldn’t you just have told the police?”

“I tried, but they weren’t interested, so I left. It was all on CCTV so it was pretty well cut and dried except things that were said, and they were pretty obvious.”

“It was shown on the telly a bit later.”

“With the sawn off shotguns?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” smirked Danni.

“I saw that—weren’t you scared, Cathy?”

“Very but I don’t like being pushed around by scumbags.”

“But with guns, it’s so dangerous.”

“It was for them, eh, Mummy?”

“If you say so.”

By the time we were finished with tales of derring-do, we were back in Dorchester and five minutes later were ordering mugs of tea and roast lamb dinners. I sat and completed the Observer, ‘Everyman’ crossword while Danielle looked at the sports pages.

We waited about fifteen minutes and were served with two huge platefuls of food with roast potatoes, new potatoes, carrots, broccoli, green beans, cauliflower and cabbage, plus a few peas as well. Danielle’s eyes widened when she saw her meal arriving. With a Yorkshire pudding and some mint sauce we struggled to finish the whopping dinner, or I did unlike my daughter who temporarily regained her boyish appetite. In the corner we watched a group of four or five of the cycling event organisers chatting. I’d explained to them about the accident for which they were grateful. One of them, an older woman, asked if it was me who’d made the dormouse film. I couldn’t lie, so we chatted about that for a while. It transpired that she was interested in dormice as well. I told her to contact Carol through the wildlife trust to get involved with it locally.

The drive back was bad as we were caught up with the show traffic. I did think about heading north and circling the town but realised if we did we get caught up with the steam fair. Simon and his entourage enjoyed themselves. They all had burgers for their lunches and I suspected cost a deal more than our fresh cooked roast dinners. They got home before us as we hit traffic from both shows, plus they were twenty miles closer to home than us.

“Did you see any do-mouses, Mummy? asked Meems.

“Yes, sweetheart, two adults at the first site and then a mother and four babies.”

“Did she bite you?”

“No, sweetheart, though she was obviously worried about her babies.”

“You wouldn’t huwt them, would you, Mummy?”

“Of course not, Meems.”

“Did Danielle see the babies?”

“She did.”

“Was the mummy mouse wike Spike?”

“A bit, she had a white bit at the end of her tail, as some dormice do.”

“Whyzat, Mummy?”

“It’s just a natural variation, some have white tipped tails and others don’t. Beyond that I don’t know.”

“Huh, some bloody biologist,” said Trish from behind me, running off in a fit of giggles.

Julie smirked then said, “You shouldn’t let her get away with speaking to you like that.”

“Why? You do it all the time.”

“So, I’m a teenager, so it’s acceptable.”

“Says who?” I challenged.

“Says me,” she retorted and we laughed loudly. “Tell you what, if you go again on a Sunday, gi’ me a shout and I might come with you.”

“I told you last night where I was going, but you declined.”

“Yeah well I didn’t know it was going to be such a splendid day. Coulda boosted my tan wandering round.”

“We were in woodland, dummy,” challenged Danni, “it was dark half the time.”

“Trust you lot to make such heavy weather of catching a couple of bloody dormice,” she rolled her eyes which indicated she was joking.

“But you just heard Trish criticising me as an ecology lecturer,” I reminded her.

“What does she know about it?”

“She’ll have read the book,” I said with a poker face.

“Yeah, that about sums her up,” said Julie dismissively. “All she has is book learning which is useless without some practical back up.”

“She still knows more about things than you do.”

“A likely tale,” rebutted Julie.

“It’s true.”

“So how come she needs Mummy to do her hair?”

“She’s ten years old, Julie, I’ll bet you couldn’t do much to yours at that age.” Danni laid into her elder sister.

“I mighta done,” she said blushing but we all knew she was telling fibs.

“Trish can do simple stuff to her hair like ponytails, plaits and pigtails,” I defended her because I felt it was true.

“You’re all ganging up on me, I know when I’m on to a hiding to nothing, I’ll be in my room if anyone wants me.” Julie sloped off up the stairs.

“Can’t think who?” called Danni after her.

“Oh bollocks,” called Julie from half way up the stairs.

“That’s right, turn to abuse ’cos you lost the argument,” Danni said this at her sister rather than to her and probably more for my sake than Trish’s.