The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2980 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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“You’re late, babes,” offered Simon, “what happened to your clothes?” he noticed the now brownish red residue on my jeans.

“We stopped to help at an accident.”

“What with a chainsaw?”

“No, but similar outcomes, lots of haemoglobin about.”

“But none of it is yours?”

“No, I’m going to shower could you make me some tea, it’s been a difficult day.”

Quarter of an hour later I was dumping my clothing in the machine with copious amounts of enzyme wash, which is what biological detergents are all about. I might have to wash the jeans again or even chuck them out, but for now I’ve put them on a cool but long wash. After setting the laundry in action I sat and drank my tea after being welcomed home by the youngsters as if I’d been away for months not one night.

I described the moment my dormousing colleague made the mistake of assuming Danielle’s boyfriend would play soccer while she went shopping, or whatever he imagined girls did. Simon smirked as he could see it coming, when I delivered the punchline, he laughed loudly. He did so again when I described the buying of the football boots and how I squeezed another five per cent out the shop for Danni’s signed photo.

However, when I described the injuries of the people in the car his face turned almost white. “D’you need to see anyone about it?”

“Like who?”

“Your shrink or a counsellor.”

“I’ll be okay—I think.”

“You kept Danni away from it?”

“Of course, but she saw the state of me and knew it would be like a slaughterhouse.”

“Has she ever been in one, a slaughterhouse, I mean.”

“I hope not. I did some work for one which required me collecting specimens to look for liver flukes. That was bad enough collecting buckets of livers.”

“So d’you think the wheel coming off caused the accident?”

“I was doing seventy in the inside lane and he came flying past me at, at least eighty, if not more towing a caravan—that is asking for trouble.”

“Thought the maximum speed for towing was fifty or sixty.”

“It is—I’m not sure, I don’t ever tow anything if I can help it.”

“Only Lizzie on the bike.”

“That’s hardly in this sort of category is it?”

“In this case the emphasis being the gory.”

David had made us two dinners, Danni had had hers but I wasn’t that hungry and I certainly didn’t want any meat—I’d seen enough at the accident. So between them, Danni and Simon ate my roast beef and I had scrambled eggs on toast—without any tomato ketchup.

“Will the police be needing a statement?”

“I sort of gave them one, but they have our address if they want me.”

“What will happen to the baby?”

“I don’t know, Danni was saying he hoped she wouldn’t end up in a home which was spoken so much emotion, I had difficulty nor tearing up.”

“You saved her life, babes.”

“I’m sure anyone else would have done the same.”

“Not according to Danni, she said one of the men threw up and walked away.”

“The second one didn’t and I’d have much more trouble rescuing her without his help.”

“Well I think you were very brave and selfless.”

“Si, I did what any woman would do, rescue the baby and look after it until someone official could take her off me and hopefully reunite her with some of her family.”

“Mummy, the accident is on telly,” Trish came flying into the kitchen and Simon pulled me through to watch.

“Jesus,” he said when he saw the mess and to my horror, a helicopter had filmed me climbing out of the car and handing the baby to my helper, only for him to give her back to me as soon as I landed on the ground again.

‘A family holiday became a tragedy when the caravan being towed by car turned over and pulled the car off the road. The only survivor a baby girl of eleven months who was rescued by two members of the public who stopped to help, the young woman climbing into the car to find the baby, who she looked after until the baby was taken away by police later.

People who witnessed the accident said the car towing the caravan was going too fast possibly trying to make a ferry crossing. Sarah Whelan for BBC Bristol, here at the M4, Wiltshire.’

“Is that you, Mummy?”

“Looks like.”

“At least it wasn’t on fire this time,” said Simon quietly.

“That’s true.” It was probably the only good thing as I reflected on the girl and her parents who lost their lives horribly, because they were rushing to board a ferry. We take too many risks with cars because we’re over familiar with them, forgetting that it takes a fraction of a second at seventy miles an hour to kill someone and what the velocity of a big car travelling at that speed would be if it hit something just blows me away. Statistically, motorways have fewer fatalities than country roads because they’re built to accommodate speed, country roads aren’t but people drive on them as if they were. The number of times I’ve nearly been killed while out on a bike by some idiot driving too fast, is too frequent to count—not including Stella’s interaction with me, what seems a lifetime ago and which changed my life so dramatically.

Fortunately she wasn’t travelling as fast because of the thunderstorm and the deluge that accompanied it otherwise instead of being here now, I’d have been just another accident statistic, another cyclist killed by a motor vehicle and I read the other day that even computer controlled cars aren’t foolproof, I think it was some Tesla car that was being driven by computer had some sort of malfunction and the ‘driver’ was killed by a much larger conventional vehicle.

Controlling a car is a very skilled task requiring the driver to be aware of all other traffic and pedestrians, weather conditions, direction of self and others, while independently moving different parts of the body to act in synchronicity. Any major physical task like riding a bike or playing a musical instrument requires coordination of several parts of the body involving millions of neurons and muscle fibres to perform the movements required as well as the alertness to be aware of other things too. It makes us seem very clever, then I think of the amount of coordination used by flying creatures like birds or bats or butterflies, the latter having very few nervous system compared to our own, though some birds have been shown to have brains which comprise small neurons but in larger numbers than even some primates, making them very clever compared to brain size and these birds are able to solve problems and use tools—sound familiar?