The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2856 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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“She’s turning into a really lovely young woman,” I said to Simon as we cuddled in bed.

“Which one—there’s a few to choose from?”

“Danielle—I was just talking about her.”

“You didn’t actually say which one though.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“Well I’m sorry but I didn’t hear it.”

“Right, well I’m talking about Danielle, okay?”

“Sure, fire away.”

“She’s turning into a really lovely young woman.”

“You already said that.”

“Well it’s worth repeating because she has come on so much in the last year or so.”

“The soccer makes a difference.”

“How d’you mean?”

“It gives her a focus outside the family or school.”

“That’s very insightful, dear.”

“She’s my daughter, we talked on the way back from Reading.”

“What with Trish and Livvie in the car?”

“They were sitting in the back playing with their iPods or whatever they are, singing along to music, I think, it might have been someone neutering cats without an anaesthetic.”

“I know Trish is a bit off perfect pitch...”

“Perfect pitch? If she was a tent she’d be pitched half way up a bloody tree.”

“She’s not that bad.”

“You didn’t have to suffer her singing for two hours each way.”

She can make a journey seem rather longer than the actual mileage.

“Anyway, what did you talk to Danni about?”

“Lots of things including her situation, what she’d like to do as a career and so forth.”

“What did she say about a career?”

“Well obviously if she gets a few more caps she should be a bit more saleable in terms playing for a club side. At the same time she realises she needs something else as a proper job as soccer won’t pay her a living for many years or she could get an injury and it stop suddenly.”

“Did she say what she’d like to do other than play for England?”

“Yeah, play for Reading or one of the big clubs—they pay more and teach sports science.”

“I told her biology would go well with sports science.”

“I’m sure it would and she said you’d suggested it but she’d rather do geography.”

“That’s up to her, biology would mean less work but if she wants to do geography, so be it.”

“Don’t be so dismissive just because she doesn’t want to do your precious biology.”

“I’m not, I don’t mind what she does as long as she does her best and preferably gets a degree because there’ll be so many graduates out there by the time she’s competing for jobs.”

“You don’t rate sports science, do you?”

“Can’t say I know that much about it but it’s a relatively modern course.”

“Which doesn’t count for much academically?”

“I really don’t know, Simon, because I don’t know what it involves.”

“You think it’s like media studies, don’t you?”

“I don’t know but then I teach ecology and some feel that’s a pseudoscience teaching the bleeding obvious to girlies who haven’t got the brains to do physics or maths.”

“Is it true?”

“What?”

“Ecology is a pseudoscience?”

“I don’t think so and they only say it because the course has twice as many girls as boys on it.”

“Is it easy?”

“Not if you do it properly.”

“You seem to find it so.”

“Sometimes.”

“Come off it, Cathy, you are extremely good at it—the mammal survey shows that.”

“Surveying is important but it’s only one aspect of ecology if you’re trying to understand the relationship of an organism to its environment. You have to understand populations and for that you need base numbers.”

“And you have to find ways of counting them.”

“Or things which represent them if you have some sort of benchmark for that.”

“Like what?”

“Well sometimes the subject species is very hard to see—like otters. So you look for spraints and if you have the facilities you can do DNA tests on those to see how many actual animals you have.”

“I hate to ask but is a spraint what I think it is?”

“It’s poo.”

“I thought it might be, so you go round counting otter poo to say how many are in the area?”

“More or less, yes. Otters are mustelids, the badger family and they have special scent glands near the anus and they’re effectively leaving a scent marker to declare a territory.”

“That must smell lovely, fishy and badger—delicious.”

“The ones I smelt weren’t too bad.”

“You’ve actually gone around sniffing otter poop?”

“Yes, why?”

“Don’t tell me all in the name of science.”

“Yes in both senses.”

“Both senses? I’d have thought only one sense was involved, that of smell.”

“You usually find them by sight then sniff them to see how fresh they are. The smell has been described variously as ranging from fresh mown hay to fishy and musky. The age of it is obviously a factor in that. I remember years ago listening to a chap from the Vincent Trust talking about sniffing spraints and he got a fish bone stuck up his nose—ended up at hospital who were intrigued about how it got there.”

“I’ll bet the average casualty officer has seen stranger things stuck in human orifices than a fish bone.”

“That sounds interesting, do tell more.”

I could feel him blushing even with the lights out. “I think it’s pretty obvious, don’t you?”

“Uh no, that’s why I’m asking.”

“I think you’re winding me up.”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh ye of so little faith.”

“Look here, Missus, just ‘cos you’re married to an aristocrat and spot dormice at a thousand yards or sniff otter poo at a closer range, don’t mean you aren’t into taking the piss on occasion.”

“But I’d have thought that anyone who was daft enough to marry an aristocrat wouldn’t have a clue about casualty officers because their imagination wasn’t up to it.”

“According to Stella, her wot is my sister, like; she said stupid people stick carrots up their bums or fannies and the stalks tear off and because they’re lubricated with all sorts of things they can’t grip them to pull them out.”

“Ugh—I hope they don’t try to eat the carrot afterwards,” I screwed up my face as there is only one thing I allow to probe my newest orifice, which is attached to about fourteen stone of human, it’s not likely to get stuck especially as I’m not a vixen.

“I doubt they’d want to eat them after they’d been up...” he gave a slight cough which made me want to giggle.

“Might give it more body,” I suggested and he groaned.

Our conversation had deviated somewhat from Danielle but it had been a bit of fun. I think Stella told me of her time as a nurse in A&E and the strange things they encountered, from men having car accidents and found to be wearing stockings and suspenders under their suit trousers to those who had candles in strange places which had broken and they were frightened to pull on them just in case. Humans are strange creatures at the best of times.