The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2939 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 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 arrived back at the university just in time to grab a tuna baguette for my lunch. They hadn’t missed me apparently. I sat with Diane and Debbie who were discussing various household things like curtains. “I thought your house was furnished?” I said knowing full well it was, it was my house or one of them.

“Yeah, it is but I’d like to personalise it a bit and some new curtains in the lounge would do that.”

“It’s your money.”

“I’ve seen some nice ones in Debenhams or John Lewis.”

“Make sure they’ve got the right top to them.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Is it a Swish type or curtain poles?”

“I don’t think it’s poles.”

“So you’ll need some with rufflette tape.”

“What’s that?” she asked looking puzzled.

“It’s the tape they put on the top of curtains to put your hooks in, it also enables you to ruffle the tops of the curtains. How big are the windows?”

“I don’t know.”

I looked across at Diane who rolled eyes, effectively saying, you started it, you finish it.

“Right, you need to measure the windows both width and drop, then depending upon the amount of ruffling you want you need to allow for that in the width of the curtains, usually that’s about three to one. So each curtain will need to be about one and a half times the width of your window or wider. Then for the drop...” Diane smirked, Debbie had no idea. So it looks like she had never tried to hang her own curtains before.

The last thing I needed was to start domesticating another late adolescent woman, it was bad enough having loads of them at home. It seemed that so many young women have no idea about homemaking—so presumably they either get their mothers to do it, live somewhere it’s all been done already, or pay someone to do it for them. They can do all sorts of things on their smart phones, call up airstrikes or find out the weather forecast for Mars but they can barely boil an egg or wash and iron their own clothes. Am I an anachronism?

It’s not just because some of them were brought up as boys, I was—nominally at least, but I was still taught these skills. I suspect my mother either guessed the truth, even if she didn’t want to accept it but she taught me how to be a homemaker or housekeeper all the same, passing on the skills she had, like my dad showed me a small amount of bike maintenance, some DIY and gardening. I never really like gardening but I did enjoy seeing the hidden wildlife in the garden, various insects and other invertebrates, which you only see when you start doing things like moving tubs or pots or digging. I remember finding six different type of spiders in the garden shed, from cribellate web builders that prey on woodlice—the web is like a barbed wire entanglement and the more the prey struggle the more they entrap themselves, to small jumping spiders, like Salticus scenicus, sometimes called the zebra spider. I still enjoy finding them, they have wonderful eyesight which they use to stalk their prey, then jump on it. If you move your finger slowly round them in a circle they’ll turn round to watch it—great fun.

On the floor of the shed when I moved a petrol can out ran another woodlouse hunter, Dysdera crocata which feeds almost exclusively on them. My dad finally came to see what I’d been doing and when I pointed out all the spiders he told me I could clean them all out next weekend and tidy the shed, unless I was too girlish to do so. Okay, I don’t like having things crawl over me or feel webs sticking to my skin, but none of the British spiders worry me, even though all but two are venomous, their fangs aren’t generally thought to be strong enough to bite us. There are always exceptions and the tabloids are full of horror stories of how someone got bitten on the foot and their leg dropped off—most are total nonsense.

Apart from Debbie not being much of a practical housekeeper, she wasn’t much of a practical biologist either, neither being a lab rat type or a fieldworker like me. She knew the theories and seemed to get by with those in the various exams she did, without being good at dissection or microscopy. I was good at both, though I hated the former I was pretty damn good at making microscope slides, which I think I might have mentioned before when Dr Butterworth at Sussex noticed my writing on other people’s slides—he always called me Miss Watts, I suppose my appearance and writing were a bit girlish.

The downside of Debbie’s practical shortcomings is that someone else will have to teach those things she can’t, or we’ll have to teach her how to do it. I don’t know which is going to take more time. She seems bright enough, so I don’t quite understand how she missed out on it, let alone how she passed her exams. Oh well, we’re stuck with her now. John the technician has been supervising one or two students, he’s studying himself for a master’s degree, but not with us, which removes one element of potential criticism. I might get him to show Debbie how to do certain things in the lab.

Could it be inflation, but the nine-day wonder seems to have reduced by two thirds. People still point her out on campus but the media interest seems to have died down thank goodness. So all we need to do is teach her loads of practical skills and she’ll make someone a good wife and biology teacher—not necessarily in that order.

As we walked back towards the department, she asked me if I’d been taught all that when I was a girl. I nodded and Diane smirked, which fortunately wasn’t noticed by Debbie. “You’re so lucky, I was brought up as a boy despite my telling my mother I wanted to be a girl, she tried to ignore me and it. As our house was always quite tidy I assume she could do most of it but never taught me anything like that.”

“Boys should be taught basic life skills as well as girls, so cooking, cleaning, doing repairs should be across the board and I feel if boys want to learn how to sew, they should be allowed to learn.”

“Good idea, perhaps they do it nowadays.”

“In some schools, but too many don’t bother, mind you lots of girls can’t do the basics either, so you’re not alone,” I offered as mitigation and she grabbed it with both hands.