The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2803 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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After dinner I had to fend off questions about our new housekeeper. “She knows you two,” I said to Julie and Phoebe.

“How’s that?” Julie shot back.

“You cut her hair.”

“What’s her name?”

“Amanda.”

“Is she blonde?”

“Her hair is.”

She rolled her eyes, “Smart arse,” she muttered before adding, “Does she have long straight hair?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean, damn, I’ll have to give her discount now.”

“So sorry,” I replied not meaning a word of it. I left the table and the clearing up to the others for a change returning to my dormouse paper. Possibly because I was more relaxed about things, the thing fell into place in an hour and a further thirty minutes and I’d inserted all the footnotes and references, stuck the bibliography on the end and emailed it to Diane’s address at the university, for her to proof it for me. I also printed off a copy for Tom to read. He was astonished I’d finished it, but sometimes things just fall into place and other days you struggle with no hope of getting it right or written. How professional writers can sit down and write everyday amazes me but then I doubt they have dozens of kids demanding their attention.

Having finished the paper and it being a Saturday evening, I agreed to run a sewing bee for the girls until nine, it was now half past seven. Five of them showed up including Danielle who wanted to see if she could alter a skirt which had got a bit tight—considering how much she eats, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

The skirt was no problem, we just moved the button and it became comfortable again. Her school skirts were okay as they had a bit of elastic in the waistband. Her hips were certainly spreading and despite the previous skirt being tight, her waist was quite trim as it should be at fourteen, especially in one who does so much sport.

All the girls were quite trim possibly because they were quite young and also because they didn’t have that much access to sweets or encouraged to drink fizzy cola or lemonade. Instead they had plenty of fruit and got loads of exercise. At times they grumbled but I tried to explain how if they stayed slim apart from being prettier they’d be healthier and that no one would want to be their friends if they ate themselves silly or were sick or both.

The sewing session was quite useful and I got some repairs done and discovered it isn’t only boys who have buttons and seams split on school uniforms. I also had the girls sewing name labels in some new school clothes—their own, naturally. They protested but when I pointed out what would happen if they didn’t identify their own clothing, then it could be mixed up with other girls’ stuff and at home it was no big deal, did they want that degree of familiarity with relative strangers? They of course replied that I should do it for them. I told them that I was no longer going to do it as they were all capable of doing it themselves and so they would or risk other people wearing their knickers.

It worked, at least as far as they all sewed the labels in their underwear while making retching noises—girls can be just as challenging as boys. Sammi came down with one of her suit jackets—she’d caught it on a cage thing at Waterloo station and it was torn on the body of the jacket. It posed quite a difficulty, it was lined and also had a stiffening material in places. I took an hour to repair the tear, mainly on a seam but the return of the other bits to how they were was more than challenging. That took another hour and handing it back to her she was told that I didn’t think I could do any more like that, hoping she didn’t tear them in future and didn’t try to retaliate by declining to do charts for lecture notes or papers, like the one I’d just finished. We included half a dozen charts, box type and pie ones plus three photographs.

Daddy had finished reading through my paper and said it was okay to his eyes and should be all right for peer review. As soon as Diane had checked it for typos it could go off to the journal. It was nice to quote four of my old papers, one of which had been pre changeover, the others were all more recent and used research I’d done while at Portsmouth or at least published while here.

I got the younger ones off to bed after Julie had actually got Lizzie to bed and then Cate. I hoped she wasn’t getting broody in her old age. Trish, Livvie, Meems and Hannah went off together and I let them listen to a talking book. Downstairs I went to finish my sewing while it was quiet and found Julie waiting for me. “I’ve made you some tea.”

“That’s very kind, sweetheart,” which meant, what are you after.

“Can I have a little chat, Mummy?”

“Of course, shut the door and we won’t be disturbed.” She did as I asked and I sipped at my tea.

“I’m not sure how to put this...”

“Take your time,” I said putting down my cup.

“I want to expand the business.”

“Okay.”

“I want to do laser hair removal.”

“Do you need courses for that?”

“Yeah, what I can’t do is afford the courses and the equipment.”

“So what d’you want me to do?”

“Help me convince Daddy to loan us the money.”

“Have you got space to do that assuming he gives you the money?”

“Yeah, we’ve got two rooms out the back we can convert to other things. Maureen or one of her lot will do the work for us, she’s costed it for us.”

“So Phoebe is in on this too and happy about it?”

“Yeah, but I’ll do the courses first, then once we’ve covered our outlays, we can look to possibly set up another room and she can do the courses.”

“So you want me to speak to Daddy and prime him?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“Okay, but this is for loans?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“We thought we might offer the service to transgenders.”

“During normal hours?”

“Yeah, why not? They’ve got to mix with muggles at some point.”

“Muggles—as in H. Potter esquire?”

“Yeah, those not in on things.”

“Be careful you don’t alienate your blue rinse brigade while you still need them.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t. We see the odd one now for electrolysis or makeovers, but usually we do that in the afternoons or early evenings, unless they look okay and sound okay.”

“Yes voice can be a great problem for some people.”

“We did think about getting someone in to do that.”

“The way you’re going you sound as if you’re setting up a changeover service?”

“That’s what we’re doing.”

“Is there enough custom to make it pay?”

“Oh god, yeah; being trans is the in thing.”

“What if it peaks and troughs?”

“We go back to what we used to do, clever innit?”

“I’ll tell you that when I see your books after the first year.”

“Thanks, Mum, you’re a star.” She pecked me on the cheek and smirking went off leaving me with the problem of how to soften up Simon for the assault on his pocket. I hope they’ve done some sort of business plan.