The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2967 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 complained to Tom that the police weren’t taking me seriously. He asked what I’d meant, so I explained my interview with the men from Bristol and my subsequent chat with Andy Bond. He shrugged and told me as I’d done all I could to bring about a solving of the crime and the subsequent conviction of the culprits, I should just let it go. I tried to explain that I didn’t think the young woman they’d so brutally murdered would rest until they were prosecuted.

He gave me a very old fashioned look which I supposed I deserved because I was supposed to be the arch sceptic about religion and afterlife. Mind you I didn’t necessarily see the two were linked, nor that a temporary sort of survival meant proof of life after death as even Newtonian physics suggested that energy nor matter could be created or destroyed. Both can be altered however and this was how I saw life. For most of us it was an energy that filled our bodies which disappeared on death, presumably dissipated in some way’; but for some it took longer and they hung around for a while, possibly consciously. My problem was that now she knew I understood what had happened, she would pester me to punish her killers.

There wasn’t much else I could do for the moment, so I busied myself with work and family. Why is there always so much work left over at the end of the day? I reckon if I worked twenty six hours a day, I wouldn’t get it all done. An item on the radio news made me smile, apparently up to eighty schools have opted for a gender neutral uniform, which means boys can wear skirts if they like and girls can wear trousers. Does that mean the boys can wear ribbons in their hair and frilly panties under the skirts, or tights or wear makeup and nail varnish?

In some ways I felt good for future transgender children in others I wasn’t sure. Okay, I’d have loved to be like Trish and Danni are now, except I wore skirts occasionally to school but at the instruction of the sadistic headmaster we had, who was trying to humiliate me. I can still remember the day he made me stand in front of the whole school and threatened anyone who picked on me, except the instruction to most of the thugs was heard as the opposite and just to make sure they got the correct target, I was the only one wearing a skirt. I didn’t realise until after his death, how Mr Whitehead had tried to protect me and how his wife had correctly identified me as female not gay.

I’m not sure how wearing a skirt will improve things for transgender children because most wannabe girls don’t just want to wear the clothing, they want the whole shebang, including a female body. Cross-dressers will do okay, but even there few will want to be identified to the hoi polloi who will tease or bully them. I didn’t just want to wear a skirt or the whole girl’s uniform, I wanted to be seen, treated as and become a girl—it’s a total immersion package and I’m not sure the new ruling will make any difference, except possibly on a very warm day, but even then, skirts can be quite warm too. The sad thing is, if my experience is anything to go by, wearing tights and a skirt in cold weather keeps your bum and abdomen warm, but your legs and feet get cold, unless you’re wearing boots.

The i, the smaller version of the Independent which is now independent of the Independent, having been sold off, had an interesting article about guns and Americans. Stefano Hatfield went to visit family in the States and mentioned he’d never handled a gun. Some of his cousins were horrified and began producing all sorts of weapons which he found equally horrifying. He couldn’t understand why they wanted them, especially given the number of shootings each year, and they couldn’t understand his revulsion of guns, even after this latest outrage in Orlando. It seems it’s not just language which separates the UK and the US.

Two more of our potential sponsors pulled out until after the referendum. They as good as told me a leave vote would mean they’d be looking to quit the UK and would therefore not need a British university to do their research. The future was beginning to get a bit worrying but the Brexit supporters just refuse to see it. At the moment, that’s five items of research we’ve lost in the past couple of months, some of my post grad students may well lose their funding if it continues, unless I find alternative sponsors—not always easy for environmental subjects and likely to be harder if we do leave the EU.

At lunch, Diane and I met up with Pippa who was still effectively running the dean’s office because Tom who was acting dean was now acting Vice Chancellor, so they had to find a temporary acting dean who can only do the job three days a week, so we have the joy of a part time, acting, temporary dean. Perhaps I don’t feel so bad as acting professor any more, assuming I have a department to chair after the referendum.

I collected the girls in the VW people carrier and they grumbled it wasn’t the Jaguar. If they’d been a bit older I’d have told them to walk home and driven off. Instead I was stuck with them whining in the back of the car. I bit my tongue because if I’d started I wasn’t sure I could stop from telling them a few facts of life and how spoilt they all were.

While waiting for dinner, I was doing yet more paperwork when I decided to call Andy Bond and ask if there was any news on the DES inspector. He told me it had gone quiet on the grapevine which could mean the police were digging deep and had lots of evidence to sort through or that it was a non starter. It began to look as if it may be the latter and he’d be allowed to take early retirement. If that happened I might go after him myself with a private prosecution. It’s expensive and can cost hundreds of thousands, in which case I might need to get Simon’s backing. Legal cases can easily drag on for a year or two so I’ll wait and see what happens.

Oh poo, an academic council meeting tomorrow—what a wonderful waste of time that is, especially as I have several meetings I’m trying to set up as well as all the paperwork that accompanies them. Meetings I run, tend to be very focused because I just don’t have time for frittering away a morning or an afternoon, so I tend to avoid some of them and the people who call them. Such is life in academia and unfortunately, I can’t avoid the meeting tomorrow—bugger.