The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3067 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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“Where the hell did this rag come from?” I ranted throwing the newspaper down on the floor and kicking it for good measure. The dog and the cat disappeared in a cloud of dust and even the girls seemed noticeable by their absence.

“Did you call, my beloved?” said Simon stifling a smirk.

“This..this rag,” I stamped upon the Sunday Telegraph which was the object of my ire.

“The paper you’ve just spent half an hour doing the crossword in? I bought it when I went for fuel, the rugby coverage is very good. Why?”

“That moron Booker has suggested Trump is right to disbelieve climate change because it’s all a con by climate scientists.”

“Ah, I think I understand the problem. Look most Sunday Torygraph readers are ninety five and senile, so what they read today they’ll have forgotten by—today.”

“I wrote castigating him once before about badgers, he doesn’t research his piece just writes whatever comes into his arse.”

“I think you mean his head, dearest.”

“Not with shit like he writes.”

“Point taken—did I read somewhere that women swear more than men these days?”

“How the bloody hell would I know?”

“Fine, would modom like a cup of best Assam, Ceylonese and Kenyan blended tea?”

“What’s wrong with Twinings?” I asked too irritated to really think about what he was saying. Ever since Brexit, the world seemed to have been going mad, confirmation being received when Trump was elected the next president of the United States. Now this pile of pigswill purporting to be a paper and its message decrying years of research by climate scientists by a pipsqueak with a brain smaller than an amoeba’s mitochondrion (they don’t have one), just pushed me over the edge.

“That is what Twinings is.”

“What is?”

“Never mind, I’ll put the kettle on—it’s like groundhog day some days...” he wittered on to himself.

I picked up the newspaper and after rolling it up threw it in our recycling bin. By this time he was calling me to come and get my tea. I sat and picked up the mug in both hands, then put it down rather quickly, god it was hot. He sniggered and I fumed.

“Look I know you’re upset by what the Americans have done, but it is their country and they are entitled to do what they want with it.”

“Yes, but to hear the president elect is looking to wriggle out of the Paris agreement on climate change, makes me feel very isolated.”

“Why?”

“It’s seen as fact that we have more carbon in the atmosphere than there has been for ten thousand years. The evidence in core samples taken from the Arctic and the Antarctic show this is the case and the Americans have been measuring recent amounts—since the nineteen sixties on Hawaii. The amount of carbon dioxide is rising year on year and temperatures are also rising. The ice is melting at the poles, especially the Arctic and some stupid idiot gets himself elected president and denies it all, declaring it a hoax by the Chinese. That was bad enough but for it to be trumpeted so triumphantly in the Telegraph was just too much.”

“So if he withdraws America from the accord, the rest will just have to go along without him.”

“Except that the US is the second largest producer of carbon emissions after China and the Chinese are signed up to the accord.”

“So let the Chinese lead on it, that should stir him enough to bring him to senses.”

“I don’t think he cares about anything but himself.”

“Does any politician?”

I shrugged, “Some do but I guess you’re right.”

“Why are you so upset about Trump anyway?” he took a large sip of tea.

“I was thinking of accepting the chair they were offering me at Havard.”
It worked a treat, he sprayed tea all over himself and the table and ended up coughing like a drowning man, which I suppose he was if he’d inhaled tea.

I sat there smirking, enjoying my revenge. David came over to see what was happening and slapped Simon several times on his back. “You okay?” he asked. Simon coughed and nodded, tears running down his face. I simply sat and drank my tea and smirked some more—it’s nice when a plan comes together.

“You did that deliberately,” he accused, wiping a variety of fluids from his face and dabbing at the table.

“Moi?”

“Yes, you bitch, tu.”

“C’est la vie,” I said and walked away from the table and my somewhat embarrassed and damp hubby.

“You set him up for that, didn’t you?” accused Julie.

“Prove it,” I said and smirked and she chuckled.

“I expect he asked for it.”

I shrugged.

Half an hour later, I was in my study dealing with an item of national importance—what to get the girls for Christmas that cost less than two hundred pounds and was smaller than a jet fighter—when Simon came into the room.

“Hello darling,” I purred.

“You set me up, you have no intention of going to Havard. I just spoke to Tom and he knows nothing about it.”

“Well I’d hardly tell him until I made my mind up, would I now?”

For a moment doubt came over his face, “You wouldn’t leave your precious dormice would you?”

“I think they would normally come after the children, darling.”

“Yeah, and just above me.”

“Aww snookums, you’re jealous of some dormice.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You are,” I goaded.

“All right, so I am, what of it? You’re the most important thing in my life and you just treated me with total contempt.”

Talk about overreaction, it was only partial contempt—but that’s men for you, emotionally unstable without women to keep them balanced and sometimes we have to give them a little wobble just to clear the air.

“Me? I wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied.

“You women are all the same, toying with our emotions...”

“Simon, you inhaled a spot of tea not drowned in it. Besides you were teasing me about tea. I just got my own back.”

“I didn’t humiliate you in front of the staff.”

“No, neither did I you.”

“What’s David then?”

“He wasn’t listening, he had his iPod in playing nineteen seventies pop music.”

“How d’you know that?”

“He was singing along with it.”

“That’s what the horrible noise was, I thought he’d just beaten whatever we’re having for dinner, to death.”

“Nah, it would make less noise than that—unless it was one of the children.”

“Wouldn’t they take too long to cook?”

“Not one of the younger ones.”

“You have a very strange sense of humour, wifey.”

“And you don’t?” I almost choked myself getting that out.

“No, not at all, as bankers go, my humour is second only to Mark Carney.”

“Who?”

“Governor of the Bank of England.”

“But he’s Canadian, that’s cheating.”

Simon beamed at me, though quite why, I wasn’t sure but he’d obviously achieved some goal.

“I bet Julie I could work his name into a conversation with you.”

“Who, that Carney fellow?”

“Yep, the same.”

“How much?”

“She can do the table clearing after lunch.”

“Why?” I usually did it.

“Ah, that would be telling.”

I’m sure the bugger was just winding me up—yeah, that had to be it.”