The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3308 by Angharad Copyright© 2021 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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It was a few days later that I got another email from Janice. She was hurt by Mima's response but said she understood. She liked the photo and said that I seemed to have collected a whole squad of girls and she wished all of us happiness.

I wrote back saying that I didn't influence what Mima had written neither did I alter it. I also told her that Mima had been upset by seeing the original email and that had caused her problems for several days. I felt like telling her that she couldn't give something away and then ask for it back but I didn't. I could have blocked her email address but decided against it. Despite her making, what I considered the wrong choice, she was still Mima's biological or birth mother and I understood that she would feel regret at times, but that wasn't my fault, I was just a pawn in the game, but one who made it to the other side and became a queen in my own right. Yeah, I liked that analogy though it made no difference to the cheek I got when trying to get the girls to bed.

I needed to get some space because I had brought some work home. That Simon wasn't here was just as well because he'd have told me off. That he was probably working in his office or flat didn't seem to enter the equation, when he was home he expected me to be available for him. Occasionally, I had to remind him that was after the children had been sated and also that they were as much his as mine. He was usually more attentive of them for a few hours except for Mima, who had a special relationship with him and to some extent so did Danielle, who was an absolute cracker. I don't think anyone who wasn't aware of her history would believe she wasn't 100% girl and she could pout and throw tantrums with the best of them, she could also wind her father round her little finger, much better than I could with Tom, but then she'd started younger.

The university was back in full operation and we had student health offering Covid jabs two or three times a week. Students were taking advantage of it and I wanted to encourage them as it was the only way we'd ever come out of its shadow. It still annoyed me that humans were probably the most sophisticated life-forms to evolve so far and we could be decimated by one of the simplest, I suppose it was a reminder not to let arrogance verge on hubris. We weren't gods yet and probably never would be, especially if we destroyed this planet before we had another to despoil, but sometimes we act like it.

I could not believe that antivaxers were demonstrating outside schools when they learned that the kids were being offered the jab. I listened to one head teacher on the Today programme on Radio 4, detailing how they operated and they seemed well organised and funded but that all they were saying was nonsense or lies. But they rely on influencing those who perhaps are not well informed and who may then be swayed by their fairytales.

Covid has killed possibly 16 million people worldwide, how can people be in denial of it? Then I recall there are people who deny that the holocaust happened and that killed six million. I still remembered the horror of seeing the film we were shown in the sixth form, it was shot by British and American soldiers who entered the camps and the awful things they saw. The bulldozers shoving countless bodies into mass graves will live with me forever, it was like they were something other than people, something of no importance, it was dreadful, but I understood the bodies had needed to be buried to prevent even more deaths from disease. The Nazis had just killed as many of their prisoners as they could as they fled. How one human could perpetrate that sort of spitefulness and wickedness upon another completely defeats me. But history shows we always have, there are reports in the history books of Ghengis Khan having whole towns and cities slaughtered because they resisted him and his armies. According to one story, the Khan ordered that his soldiers should kill all the farmers as he couldn't see any point in them. One of his lieutenants stepped in and said, if we do that, who will feed us? The Romans were not above doing the same, the reasoning being it creates fear in their enemies and they are less likely to resist or to surrender and plead for mercy.

There are also instances of the British doing unspeakable things in their period of world domination, after the Indian Mutiny, many of the prisoners were executed. Richard I, 'Coeur de lion', a Norman-French psychopath who was king of England executed hundreds of prisoners during the siege of Acre, which they did in front of Saladin's army. So Europeans have a long history of it. Ah, but times were different then, we weren't as sophisticated as we are now, yeah now we can do it with drones or cruise missiles without being anywhere near the target. We are still cavemen emotionally but with nuclear weapons and technology, so we have a long way to go to call ourselves civilised and I suspect we probably never will.

It used to make me smile when I saw history done by Hollywood or TV companies, where Prince John was always seen as the bad guy and Richard was always the good guy, rewarding the loyal who had stymied his younger brother once again. Yeah, of course it's all absolutely true, except Richard wouldn't have spoken Anglo Saxon and that he only spent a few months of his whole reign in England also makes it unlikely. Hollywood of history is about as accurate as antivaxers on Covid.

We had our own demonstration by antivaxers trying to stop students going to get jabbed, we asked the police to come but because it was on private property, the university campus, they didn't want to know until I suggested I'd let the professor of Virology dump a pile of viruses on them, which was what he wanted to do after someone kicked the door of his car and put in a sizeable dent.

"Professor Watts, if you let that happen you'll be charged with grievous bodily harm."

"If you don't come and shift these morons I'll have to arrange to have them moved by someone else, which might include the rugby and rowing teams and our weightlifters."

"You can't, someone will get hurt."

"They have no right to be here, they have no reason to be here, they aren't students or staff or contractors or delivery people, they're just a bloody nuisance who are promulgating lies and disinformation. If I had some names I'd sue them."

"You'll need a few bob to do that," said the wag from the Hampshire Constabulary.

"My family own a bank, so that isn't an issue."

There was a short pause before I heard in the background, "Oh it's her is it. Better do something before she sues us again." I heard the person cough before he spoke directly into the microphone. "I've managed to rustle up a few officers, we'll come and break it up within the hour."

"Thank you, Inspector, I always knew I could count on the police to assist us in our job of corrupting young minds."

An hour later they'd all gone possibly helped by one of our biology lecturer's threatening to use them as lab specimens. He came out waving a couple of empty petri-dishes and they all tended to run away. The whole thing did not help my temper or the atmosphere of the day. Daddy saw to it that we had extra security on campus for the next day.

You can see I lead an interesting life, well, compared to say, a barnacle, which of course Darwin spent several years studying and categorising. I mean apart from possibly being able to claim you were examined by Darwin himself, being inundated by the tide twice a day as the high point of your life can't be terribly exciting. I believe that one species has proportionally, the longest penis in the animal kingdom - that's something to drop at the vicar's garden party, not that I'm likely to be invited anyway, unless they had a surplus of cheap firewood, to come and have a stake.

I did manage to do some work that day, but the amount was far less than I had anticipated, so I thought had some more to take home again. I called David and asked him to collect the girls in the VW and that I'd be home a bit later, as I had things I wanted to finish tonight. I left my office at eight o'clock having had a cuppa soup to keep me going. As I drove home all I could think of was what David had cooked for dinner. I couldn't remember what it was but I knew it would be tasty.

Driving home some idiot drove his car under an articulated lorry, which caused long tailbacks and a total inability to be able to turn around and try another route. The local radio suggested it was bad everywhere as drivers tried various rat runs, so I stayed where I was but did phone home to say where I was and why.

A fifteen minute journey took nearly an hour and I was extremely fed up when I did get home. The girls tried to tell me that they didn't think I wanted any dinner because I was so late, so they'd eaten it for me. They were expecting me to explode and chase them round the house, instead I sat at the kitchen table and burst into tears. Even us pawn made queens have thresholds. When Trish pretended that they hadn't noticed my covered plate in the oven and went to bring it to the table, I turned round in surprise and knocked the contents all over her. Then it was up in the shower with cold water sprayed on her for half an hour. At the end of that, two of us were thoroughly miserable, but only one of us was hungry.

Livvie cleaned up the mess assisted by Hannah while Mima helped me try to stop scalding by ripping off Trish's clothing and chasing her up to the shower. Mima shoved the dirty clothes into the machine. I was relieved that the remedy worked and a remorseful Trish apologised profusely. I forgave her and ate a bowl of cornflakes, Kikki had had my dinner - roasted lamb cutlets, before they could stop her. I was surprised Bramble hadn't got in on the act as well but she was out strangling voles or something similar.

I sent them all off to bed earlier than usual and went off to my own with a cup of tea. It had been a terrible day by anyone's standards and all I wanted to do was curl up with Simon while he held me and whispered sweet nothings. I did phone him and his phone was switched off. I had no idea what he was doing but I felt like shit and screamed it down the phone as the recorded message told me, 'The phone you are calling is switched off, please try again later.' After that I drank my tea and fell asleep without even switching the light off or cleaning my teeth - yeah, it was that bad.