The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3265 by Angharad Copyright© 2020 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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"Calculator? Oh I see, thou art wealthy in blessings, as well as materially," said Diane passing me the calculator.

"I was speaking metaphorically," I said shaking my head.

"Well, how was I supposed to know?" she complained at me.

"I thought you understood me quite well, perhaps you don't, or not as well as I thought you did."

She shrugged, "You have one message."

"Not from Daddy, is it?"

"Um - how did you guess?"

"He wants to take me for lunch?"

"Spot on."

"I wish he wouldn't."

"Why? He's a lovely old chap."

"I know that I've been looking after him for the past ten years."

"I think he's looked after you as well, hasn't he?"

"I suppose he has. What time did he say?"

She looked at her watch, "In about five minutes."

I gasped, then dashed towards the loo we have. "Dunno what you're smirking at, missus, you're coming as well, so sort yourself out."

"What?" she gasped.

"You heard me, if you're there he won't bore me to death with the same old stories."

"Oh, I see, he'll bore me instead..."
"No he won't, he'll talk about all sorts of things, he always does in company, especially attractive women."

"Gosh, I didn't think you'd noticed - recognition at last," she said making a dramatic sweep of her arm.

"Never mind hamming it up, get yourself sorted." She went into the loo as I came out, much of our conversation being through the half-open door and I'd only gone in there to check my hair and lipstick and squirt a little of the perfume in my bag, Coco by Chanel. It was one of my favourites along with No. 5. The fact that I could smell it at least showed I didn't have Covid and apparently, it's also one of the first signs of certain sorts of dementia.

The things you see in the newspapers are sometimes quite scary, this is a sign of that or that is a sign of this - both incurable, of course.

Daddy had already wished me a happy birthday, so I hoped he wasn't going to do so again before or during lunch. I really didn't want any more fuss than was absolutely necessary and besides, Simon was taking me out tonight and I didn't really want to eat too much either. Still, I was quite peckish and I suppose I could force down a tuna salad if I really tried.

Daddy arrive agreed happily to have Diane accompany me as well and we set off to the restaurant, where we ordered our usuals. "Don't you ever have anything different?" asked Diane who'd come with us often enough to be aware of it.

"Yes of course, when they run out of chicken he has beef curry, and I have been known to have a cheese jacket potato, but I prefer tuna."

"I thought they were in danger of extinction?" said Diane giving me a strange look.

"Some are. Why?"

"Well, you are an ecologist."

"I am, glad you'd worked that one out, but as Trish frequently says to me, 'Some ecologist you are,' usually in front of an audience."

"She doesn't, does she?" Diane looked horrified.

"Aye, she does," confirmed Tom, "though sometimes, she uses biologist, instead."

"What?" gasped Diane.

"It's strange, but she expects me to know the answer to every question she fires at me. If I don't, she tends to indicate her disappointment in a rather direct form," I explained.

"What a little monster," commented Diane, "and you let her get away with it?"

"Usually, it isn't worth making a fuss about and it would encourage her to do it more often to get my attention or wind me up, sometimes she will do the same to her dad but because he is such a Monty Python fan, if she's disappointed or disgruntled, she'll say, 'Not much of a cheese shop is it?' "

"I presume that's from the Cheese shop sketch?"

"Yes, with John Cleese and Michael Palin sparring, almost a reworking of the parrot sketch."

"It sounds as if you're almost as big a fan as Simon," observed Diane and Daddy snorted and nodded, thereby demonstrating that men can multitask if in a limited way.

"I don't think I ever got into Python, it was before our time anyway, and I just didn't see the repeats they put on over the years, never really appealed - too public schoolboy."

Daddy laughed and clapped his hands, "Jest whit I think tae."

I suppose she was pretty well spot-on, at least in Simon's case, though I saw them as reruns and found some of them extremely funny, except when Simon recites the script verbatim when I'm trying to go to sleep. I have never said, 'I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition,' twice. I sometimes learn quite quickly. So, as a grammar school girl, I still found many of the sketches very funny sometimes because they were very clever and sometimes because they were just so silly and we do tend to either fear or laugh at the absurd. I'd never thought of it quite like that before, least not in those terms, so perhaps those who didn't like it may have not understood it or felt frightened of it. Strewth, this was my birthday, I didn't expect to think as well as get older.

"Simon has a whole set o' DVDs if ye'd like tae borrow them," offered Tom.

"Um, I don't think so, all the same." Perhaps Diane was one who found the absurd frightening? Then I feel the same way about clowns, they scare the brown-stuff out of me, though I don't know why and I have no interest in finding out why even if I could in a reliable way. Ah, you say, 'because I'm scared of it,' maybe I am or maybe I see it as such a trivial thing I can't be bothered to waste even a second thinking about it. It's not like I go to circuses or places where I'll see them, so it isn't worth the time and I am prepared to accept we all have our foibles, so if I'm not picking at yours, leave mine alone.

Thinking about Theatre of the Absurd, I remember watching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and not really appreciating what it was all about except it's supposed to be two characters from Hamlet, that was all I knew without really knowing my Hamlet. Perhaps I'm not clever enough to understand it, or not interested in it enough to think about it, I mean, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition...

Mind you, in the sixth form, that's year eleven, we read Ionesco's, Exit the king, which is weird and of course, I got stuck with reading one of the female roles throughout the process, Queen Marie, if I remember correctly, we did Romeo and Juliet after that, yeah Shakespeare's version and I suppose you can guess I didn't get to read Romeo. But at least that was kept to just my class, we didn't do it on stage although I was threatened with it after Macbeth when I'd upset Murray over some imaginary crime, my very presence seemed to set him off and depending upon my mood at the time might have been deliberate or simply by accident.

His problem was that I was academically quite good so he couldn't get rid of me and on reflection, I'm not sure which of us suffered the more, me from his bullying and attempted humiliation of me or he from my refusal to go away or become butch. I was a girl dammit, I just didn't know how to express it except when he forced me to as supposed punishments and wearing my hair very long. I ended up in the girl's uniform several times despite Mr Whitehead's attempts to protect me, which I didn't realise at the time and regret now. He really was a super chap compared to Murray who was a homophobic bully, pure and simple or in my case, perhaps a transphobic one - though we neither really understood it as such. To him, all feminine boys were queers, which shows how far we have moved on, though it's still not far enough for some of the things I hear about even today.

Danielle asked me to watch a documentary which had been on BBC3 called, Lily - a Transgender Story, about a girl from North Wales. It was very good and I felt pleased that at least one story seemed to have a happy ending, at least as long as it went. I'm sure there are many of them but I don't have the time or inclination to watch them and only did so because Danielle had asked me to do so.

"Sae, are we ready tae go back?" asked Tom and disturbed my reverie and we trouped out to my car and back to the university.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08yr4dk/lily-a-transg...