The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3324 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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My despondency didn't improve when I saw a paper about pods of Orcas off Western Australia whose preferred meals were blue whales. It's been estimated before man started hunting these leviathans, there may have been as many as 300,000 blue whales, nowadays, numbers are estimated to be between 20 and 30 thousand.

Orcas tend to be quite specific feeders usually groups of them feed on the smaller whales, seals, pemguins or fish, but this population of Western Oz are much more adaptable to different prey and that includes the world's largest animal, the blue whale. Reading the description of the hunt and the kill was quite upsetting, so I won't detail any of it here, and of course, larger animals tend to take more killing, so it goes on for some time before the prey actually dies, where it feeds every carnivore within miles after the killer whales have sated themselves, up to fifty of them have been counted at such a kill, most of which are the smaller females, but which may be feeding their own young.

Remember whales are mammals, so their flesh is high in protein and also they are rich in fat, both of which are desirable to other whales, birds and fish. Apparently the only whale pretty well immune to such attacks is the humpback, which has large, very strong flippers which have been known to kill such things as great white sharks, so no sensible orca messes with them. Currently, their main predator is man and they are protected for the moment, though the Japanese, Norwegians and one or two other nations, who hunt whales against global public opinion, apparently in the name of science (bollocks) could change that at any time.

When I think about nations whaling and the Faroe Islands annual dolphin cull, I think I understand why this planet is heading for an extinction event, humans are just too fucking stupid and selfish to stop their nefarious activities and they feel justified to keep doing them. And who's going to stop them? Boris Johnson or Trump or that moron in Brazil? I doubt it, they're already soaked in more sleaze than a sewer microbe.

Still when I get very low like now, overworked and under pressure from all sorts of directions, I think about my girls which cheers me up and then I find out what they've been up to and I do wonder if Simon is rich enough to buy me a desert island, somewhere warm but not hot, which has dormice and lots of insects and birds I can study and forget about thousands of students and millions of moronic people.

As a desert island with dormice won't happen, Simon won't buy it for me and being an ecologist means I couldn't introduce alien species somewhere just for my own amusement, part of the problem we have now is because Victorians and Edwardians did just that, or unscrupulous types introduced them to farm for their skins or fur, and even dumber ones released them to run wild and destroy native species. Mink, especially come to mind and thanks to the animal activists, who were driven by good intentions but very little else, certainly not ecological reasoning, we have many less water voles, which are critically endangered in places and are protected, though feral American mink seem unaware of this fact. Pity they don't eat grey squirrels.

Eventually, I gave up trying to beat the paperwork and beat it home instead, where I remembered I was hosting another sewing bee. So this is what life in the fast lane is all about is it, or did I mishear Faslane, where we park our nuclear subs when Russian learner submariners are crashing into them.

On the way home, the news was either full of the No 10 party scandals, or the possibility that Russian might invade Ukraine and we would introduce even more sanctions. They haven't worked so far and unless we stop Putin being allowed any air to breathe, I can't see it working at all. I mean the Germans don't want to do anything because they import lots of gas from Russia, and no NATO country is going to get involved in a war so what's it all about? Posturing and piss I think sums it up and the thought of Boris and Putin talking about it makes me want to laugh, two compulsive liars and sociopaths swapping stories or threats. What are we going to do, stop laundering all their dirty money? The world has gone completely bonkers and the lunatics are well in charge of the asylums.

Sarah had collected the girls from school using the people carrier thing, David watching the little ones while she did so. He had apparently, cut his foot, stepping on a piece of glass when he went to the bathroom. He had dropped his tooth glass and it broke and he missed a piece - the first time anyway, he found it later after it lacerated his foot.

Sarah did some first aid on it and he went by cab to the A&E at the QA. They dressed it for him and told him not to drive. He was also told to rest it but he managed to cook our dinner and sit with his foot up much of the time. He came over to the house because he knew Sarah was there and he was fed up with being on his own.

I have no complaints about Sarah, she's been a real trooper, though I'm aware we shall lose her in October when she goes to my university, naturally, I'll distance myself from her when that happens, especially with things like exams and assignments.

When I got home, I spoke to the girls who were pleased to see me, enough to stop watching telly for twenty seconds, yeah that long. Sarah seemed to avoid me and it wasn't until David had a quiet word with me, that I understood. She'd been dusting in my study and Mr Whitehead's journal fell off the shelf and fell open at the first Macbeth play I did.

I made myself a cuppa and one for Sarah and asked Danni to find her and bring her to my study. Oh well, she'd have found out some time wouldn't she? David had also cued Danni in her discovery and so she knew in case we had to involve someone closer to her own age.

Sarah knew why I'd asked her to come to see me, though I felt like a headmistress dealing with a problem pupil. She sat opposite me on one of the sofas and sipped her tea, she looked very anxious.

"David told me that you discovered something about my history today," I used as my opening gambit.

"I'm sorry, Auntie Cathy, it just fell off the shelf, I didn't go prying, I was doing some dusting while David made us a sandwich for lunch."

"So how much do you know?"

"I puzzled over the Charlotte Watts bit then realised you'd changed your name but then I realised that you had changed more than your name."

"I have indeed, it's not top secret but it was a long time ago and my legal status is female so I don't feel that I have to explain or justify myself, though one or two people have felt let down by my not telling them.

"As I see it, we can either walk about with our hearts on our sleeve crusading or we can stand back, let the novelty die down and then get on with our lives as ordinary women. Apart from not being able to menstruate and thus bear offspring, I see myself as a non-breeding female."

"I see you as a female as well, Auntie Cathy, you're so lovely and so female in everything, I can't believe you weren't always one. You are very lucky, you really do look like a natural woman."

"I'm AIS, so never had a male puberty, my body doesn't do testosterone."

"So you were obviously meant to be a girl."

"I like to think so, but that may just be self-delusion. Some people have thought so over the years but mostly, I seem to get by."

"Danni told me that she was a boy a couple of years ago."

"So you can see you're amongst friends and why we kept telling you to stop telling everyone if they don't absolutely need to know."

"I think I'm beginning to realise that. When they all said they were trans that time we had dinner here, were they telling the truth? I can't believe you have so many trans girls here."

"I won't tell you if anyone else is, because if they are they've been re-registered as female and are no longer trans. I don't feel I have the right to disclose anything about any of the girls but I can tell there are also some biological females here as well as we neo-females."

"Can I pretend I didn't see the book and go back to thinking of you and Danni as natural women?"

"You can't unlearn something like that but you can decide what you wish to do about it, and I will repeat that every woman and girl living here is legally female."

"Well, I know they're all too young to have had surgery as you have to wait until you're eighteen, except Danielle, she told me she was a special case and had been injured in her genitals and they had to operate. She also told me she wasn't sure if she had been trans but was now female for the rest of her life, but she had adapted and was enjoying being a young woman, including dating boys."

"Her football training stops her doing too much socialising and as people are beginning to recognise her talent, she gets approached in the street for her autograph, so we have to be careful about stalkers."

"She's really beautiful, I can't believe she was a boy, maybe she's like you?"

"No, she has talent and such coordination of movement and thinking, I could never achieve what she has."

"She said you were brilliant and a good racing cyclist."

"She's being kind. Trish and Livvie are brilliant, I live in their shadows hoping I can stop them coming to grief because of their intelligence. As for cycling, I was never that good, just better than Danni for a while, I suspect she'd beat me now as she keeps fit and I spend more time sitting at a computer or desk. I'm also older than her, obviously being her adopted mum, so that doesn't help either."

"I think you're wonderful, so does Uncle Peter, he knew about you, didn't he and that was why he wanted you to give me a job, because you'd understand."

"You don't have to have experienced something to try and understand or empathise with someone, I've had gay people on my staff and as friends, I still have. My oldest friend is a gay woman I knew in school and she had me sussed before I did myself. I knew I was a girl in nursery aged three or four but the reaction from others was not nice so I hid it, like everyone does, or most of us do. My dad tried to beat it out of me."

"What Professor Agnew?" Sarah gasped, "but he's such a nice old man."

"Tom is a delightful old man, no my birth father, who died a few years ago. We were reconciled before he died but he had awful problems with me when I came back from uni because I had had a small degree of freedom and the genie wasn't going back into the bottle, however, it was Stella who launched me into transitioning but I declined to tell her that story just now."

She eventually went off to beat my children or something and I discovered my tea was cold, as I did so Danni came in, "Everything okay?" she asked.

"Of course, thank you for also outing yourself, but you didn't need to."

"I thought with Sarah, It was pretty safe, we're becoming good friends, so I don't think she's any sort of risk."

"I'm sure she isn't but you also need to learn to forget about your past unless it become essential to declare it."

"Okay, hey your tea's cold."

"I know, you couldn't make a fresh one could you while I go and change?"

"We still having sewing bee, tonight?"

"As far as I know, why?"

"Can Cindy come and is Debbie coming?"

"Yes to both, now go and make that tea while I zip up and change."

Ten minutes later I was wearing jeans and a jumper and drinking the tea Danni had brought me. I was trying to sort out my sewing basket, I'd put it away in a rush last time and had bits all over the place. I'm not the world's tidiest person but when I'm working, I need to have a degree of order, so my bike shed is very organised, when I was doing lab work, my lab was with everything in its place, it makes for easier working, so I spent the time up until dinner sorting out the cantilever box, I call my sewing basket. It was my mum's and I have lots of sentimental attachment to it as well as it being very useful and it holds loads of pins and needles as well as reels of cotton, buttons, zips, hooks and eyes and lots more.

When I did more sewing, I used to go to car boot sales and markets and buy all sorts of bits of sewing things, tapes and bias binding, velcro and dressmaker's chalk for alterations, you name it, I bought it and besides my sewing basket overflowing, I have a cupboard in my study with my electric sewing machine and the stuff I can't get into my basket, like materials and paper patterns, there's a box of those in there too.

The gong sounded and I closed up my basket and went to see what delicacy David had made for us today.