The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3062 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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On the Monday morning Liz arrived while we were having breakfast—the girls rose a bit later than usual, but they were showered and dressed.

“You’re early,” I greeted her.

“Yeah, serially. I’m a morning person.”

“Right, not sure what I am other than stay up until it’s finished sort of person.”

She laughed, “You’re a mum, it goes with the territory I believe.”

“They didn’t tell me that—beforehand.” I nodded towards the grumbling siblings.

She laughed again, “Why d’you think I don’t have any? I’ve covered junior schools where we not only tried to educate their minds, we tried to teach them some table manners. It was an inner city school and half of them got a free breakfast and lunch, so we knew they’d had something to eat that day.”

“I know of such things from reports in the papers or radio but thankfully I’ve never experienced it. I did have a young student die from AIDS, that was very sad. His dad was homophobic and he didn’t feel able to tell them.”

“So he came to you, someone he knew he could trust.”

“Sadly, he was so sick by then he had very little chance of survival, only I didn’t realize that when I took him to hospital. We did manage to heal some of the family divisions and they all saw him before he died, which happened quite suddenly.”

“How old was he?”

“About twenty two or three.”

“That’s far too young to die.”

“I agree.”

“Still nothing you could do, was there?”

“I did all I could, still cuts me up but not as much as losing a child.”

“Oh no, I’m really sorry.”

I pointed to a group photo of the girls and one boy. Ooops, big mistake.

“You lost a son, then? That must have been awful with all those girls.”

“Um, no. I lost this one, Billie,” I pointed her out. “She died in a cycling accident though the cause of death was a cerebral bleed caused by an aneurysm.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

I shrugged.

“Where’s the boy then, you only have girls here?”

“That was me, Liz,” said Danielle in an act of self-sacrifice and great courage.

“You’re joking?”

“No, I thought I wanted to be a boy and Mum and the others indulged me, then I found I could play soccer as a girl, so here I am.”

“What? You were a tomboy and discovered you could be a soccer playing girly girl?”

“That’s about it,” she blushed like a tomato—not that I’ve ever seen one of them blush. But it was half past eight, the others were dressed but she was dressed and wearing enough makeup for the rest of us.

“You still play soccer, do you?”

“Uh yeah.”

Liz nodded.

“Ask her for whom she plays?”

“Cor, grammar must have been well taught in your school,” she observed.

“Yeah, Bristol Grammar.”

“Right,” she nodded probably thinking, ‘We’ve got a right one here.’ “Okay, Danielle, for whom do you play?”

“Portsmouth ladies and the school, of course.”

“Of course,” agreed Liz.

“Tell her who else?” I prodded.

“Um—you sure?”

“Absolutely,” I never felt more positive.

“It’s hardly going to be England, is it, so who is it?” Liz tried to encourage her.

“Actually it is, Liz, she’s a woman international, three caps at senior level and two at schools level.”

Liz’s mouth fell open. “I am sorry, Danielle, I never thought—wow, so you played for England—in the World Cup?”

“No they thought I was too young to cope with the stress of that.”

“I’ll bet you would have, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d have tried.”

“None of your sisters play as well do they?”

“Trish and Livvie play for the school and Trish is pretty good.”

“But not International level…”

“Yet,” came as a rejoinder from the table as the speaker spread jam on her toast.

This was met with a roar of laughter as they all thought it was funny on several levels, not least that Trish probably isn’t good enough to play for England, but her ego demands that she try. Not necessarily a bad thing if it gives confidence and perseverance.

I had to leave, so finished my tea and grabbed my handbag and laptop bag. “You okay for all day?”

“Yeah, no prob unless they get bored with me.”

“I thought I was paying you for that not to happen. It’s only a week.”

“I was joking, once you’re gone I’ll harness them to sewing machines and turn your lounge into a sweat shop.”

“If you do, open the windows for a little while before I get home, will you. I hate smelly rooms.”

“Of course.”

“Right I’m off,” I pecked each of them on the cheek and as I left, “Oh if you don’t fancy a safari, we have some dormice in the university—we do captive breeding.”

“Sounds like a slave colony.”

“I’d never thought of it sounding that way before; but yes we breed from captive dormice. So if you want to see one, we have some there.”

“Oh thank you for that. My wimpishness has never before been demonstrated so overtly. Living on my own, I have real dread of being ill.”

“Been there done that,” I smiled, the perplexed expression that met me meant I had to elaborate just a smidgen, “When I was at uni doing my masters.”

“Ah, know it well. That was as far as I wanted to go with higher education unless I was doing the teaching. Hence this.”

“If it works, don’t knock it.”

I drove to work feeling somewhat miffed that I had to be there, but that’s what they pay me for, allegedly. Diane was ebullient, she was finishing at lunch time and while it meant I’d get more done in her absence, I’d also resent it. But I had so much to do. I’d already decided that I’d go a for a walk each lunchtime if only to have a break from pushing paper around and get some air.

As soon as Diane had gone, I grabbed my bag and walked towards the town centre stopping at a charity shop en route where my eye alighted on a book of British Bird song with two CDs containing examples. There was a bit of narrative every so often but I sat and listened to it as background noise while I worked, hoping to absorb subconsciously things like the different warblers which I have difficulty in identifying without seeing them. I already considered I was more likely to notice the garden warbler a lot quicker simply by his call.

Some are easy to remember, yellow hammer is easy, woodpeckers are too, especially the green one—which is actually yellow and black stripes when seen close to—and nuthatches are distinctive, especially to someone who spent so much of her time in or around woodlands, so are whitethroat on the edge of woodlands, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen quail—I expect Simon has shot them or eaten them, which I think is disgusting, to me they look like fat sparrows with about as much meat as a sparrow; fine for a sparrow hawk, but not a human. But then there’s only about enough meat on a pheasant for a sandwich so I should imagine grouse are similar.

At four, I’d had enough of work and the birdsong and went home to find out what had been happening there.