The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3020 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 didn’t stop to ask how a ten/eleven year old knew the bullet had ruptured the pulmonary artery let alone how she accepted I’d healed it. I’d bluffed that the pressure I’d applied to the wound had stopped the bleeding and no one seemed bothered to challenge me so we came home and hoped that no one would try and explain the apparent electro cautery. No one had seemingly noticed the blue light, possibly because a police motorcycle was parked nearby with the various lights flashing. The important thing was that the man’s life was saved, at least it was to me, even though he had threatened my daughter, I knew he wouldn’t hurt her not necessarily at his volition but because she is wanted for work later on, if what the self proclaimed goddess told me is true.

What I think of all that, the goddess stuff, is baffling, to me anyway. My model of the universe just uses scientific principles and laws to come into existence, even if we don’t quite understand it all. It doesn’t need interference from self important deities, just time and various energy potentials. So how do I explain away the various encounters with the goddess? I really don’t know but favourite is some sort of interaction in my own mind, like a sort of dialogue with my higher self to use a Jungian type approach. Beyond that, either I have some real errors in my model or it’s something else I haven’t considered yet. As for the blue light—I have no idea other than that of an electromagnetic effect of some sort. Seeing as we don’t know what dark matter or dark energy is yet, there are bigger fish to fry, like ninety five per cent of the universe, but what’s that between friends?

After eating I had few minutes to browse the web and check my emails and then to have a look at the Guardian website and apart from learning of the awful murder and sexual assault of a leading transgender activist in Turkey—there are some sick bastards there—I also learned that Australian scientists reckon they have evidence of anthropogenic global warming originating from the 1830s if not earlier from tree ring evidence and various other things like coral. It stands to reason that the industrial revolution would have had some lasting effect upon the planet, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere as that was where it started—in the Welsh borderlands around Shropshire. Having said that the build up of greenhouse gases must also be increased enormously when volcanoes erupt or huge forest fires. But they reckon as the tundra warms and the permafrost is thawed masses of methane locked up in it will be liberated and the one degree centigrade will quickly become two. “We’re doomed,” as a character from Dad’s Army used to declare at the slightest opportunity, just about sums things up. How people can deny it when the evidence is so overwhelming is astonishing, but like the Australian senator confronted by Brian Cox on the QA programme, there are people who won’t see what is before them, though I guess some might say that about me with regard to the goddess stuff. However, the existence of goddesses is a sideshow compared to the destruction of the planet which we seem hell bent on doing. How are we going to feed the world if the N. American cereal belt fails? What will happen when the ice caps do melt and how high will the sea level rise? How much land will we lose and what will happen to the displaced people? Finally, will it bring about wars?

While I have a passing interest as a human being, my primary worry is the loss of species and the destruction of biospheres. Climate change is thought wholly responsible for the extinction of an Australian mammal, the Bramble Cay melomys because the only place they were known to exist, a small island off Queensland, was inundated a few times by rising sea levels. It’s a scene that is likely to recur many times over in the coming years unless something totally unforeseen happens.

“You look sad, Mummy,” observed Livvie finding me in the study.

“Do I, sweetheart?”

“Yes, care to share?”

Where do they get these expressions from—more likely to be someone in marketing than therapy.

“I was just reading about the extinction of a little rodent in Australia caused by climate change.”

“What just one of them?”

“No, a whole colony which it seems lived on a tiny island off the coast of Queensland. Unless they find some in Papua New Guinea, then the whole species is extinct.”

“Extinct—that means forever, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it means every one of them has perished.”

“That is sad, I mean if were dormice, everyone would be sad, wouldn’t they?”

“I think there are some farmers who’d love it to happen to badgers.”

“Really? What horrible people.”

“There are horrible people in all walks of life but farmers seem to have their fair share of them.”

“Is that because they have to work so hard?”

“Possibly, but some of them don’t do physical work, they act more like executives and employ others to drive tractors and hump sacks.”

“Oh, I thought they were out with their sheepdog...”

“That’s the image they’d like to project but some are more likely getting fat sitting at a desk claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds in grain subsidies.”

“Didn’t someone say that change after Brexit?”

This kid is bright. “We’ll have to see. One argument for the badger cull is that by keeping farmers happy now they’ll more likely accept the cuts to farm subsidies later.”

“Oh, that sounds like bribery and corruption.”

“That’s what politics is all about, bribing enough people to get you to power or keep you there while you pillage the others to pay them.”

“That sounds dreadful, Mummy.”

“Politics is a dirty business where friends will stab you in the back to get the main chance.”

“Some people are awful.”

“I think that sums it up quite succinctly.”

“What does that mean?”

I keep doing this, but then they learn from interacting with adults who usually have larger vocabularies. “It means it sums things up with the minimal use of words.”

“Is that good?”

“Usually, unless you’re a journalist who’s being paid by the word.”

“People get paid by the word? Gosh, Trish could make an absolute fortune, she’s nearly as much a gasbag as you, Mummy.”

Before I could close my mouth let alone say something in response she’d skipped off to give someone else the benefit of her opinion. Ah, the joys of childhood.