The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3334 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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Something I was thinking of doing was signing up for the Riverfly Partnership and the project they run. Basically, it was set up by groups of anglers because they felt the quality of the rivers they were fishing was deteriorating but they had no way of proving it. They set about trying to do that and with the assistance of some professional groups and some local authorities they developed a system using biotic data to show how good or bad the river is.

By biotic data, I mean the live things they use to categorise their water purity and siltation rate. They now have a very useful system that relies on volunteers going out monthly to check a stretch of river which they do by kick-sampling for three minutes. Kick-sampling is holding a hand net, one that is designed to cope with the rigours of various sampling methods has a square or oblong shaped frame and you simply wade out in your river or stream, place the head of the net downstream of you and kick up the riverbed for the required time, catching any invertebrates in the net which you then empty into a tray add some more water and identify your catch.

The species are weighted so that you score so much for each that you catch and the way the numbers are weighted tells you if your river is clean or has problems. It's relatively simple, though it took years and lots of work by freshwater ecologists and biologists to sort out the weighting and it was tested against a similar much-used system and arrived at the same conclusion, so it works. It's called the ARMI system which stands for the Angler's River Monitoring Initiative. These days it's run by the Freshwater Biological Association who are based in Cumbria by Lake Windermere, but it's genuine citizen science and thousands of volunteers do the surveys every month, but it has led to the Environment Agency being called in to investigate pollution incidents, and as with all emergencies, the quicker you act the easier they are to sort.

Each area has a trigger point based upon the calculations made on the invertebrate totals and once that is reached the point is passed back up the chain of command and the appropriate agency informed. I accept it was started by people who were serving their own interests, ie the anglers, but at least they did something positive when they realised the Environment Agency only gets off its bum when they have hard data given to them and usually even then, thousands of fish and other creatures die. However, someone is noticing these things and hopefully, it means things will change and illegal polluters, whoever they are, will be caught and prosecuted.

As the database grows, research using it may be able to show if climate change is causing problems by dint of extreme weather events which means watercourses may dry up or be washed out with flash flooding; the latter often being made worse by sewage overflow discharges made by various water companies not doing the remedial work they should have done and declaring a severe weather event even when there wasn't one so they could dump untreated sewage into the river system. This endangers everyone as it pollutes possible drinking water, causes eutrophication - an overgrowth of algae or bacteria, and kills many fish and invertebrates and possibly aquatic plants and riverbank plants as well. In fact, the only ones who profit are the water companies, which is probably why it happens plus a lax and sloppy regulatory body who have seen their funding drop each year as part of current government practice. Politicians wax lyrical but act only in their own interests.

The weather has been reasonably warm and dry for the time of year and with Easter practically here, it hasn't realised it's a bank holiday on Friday and Monday because usually, it rains on them. However, it also means we won't be going far as the roads are congested for the whole weekend, especially near the coast, which we are. But typical of the rail network, they are running virtually no trains while they carry out repairs or maintenance, so it's buses or cars or air travel and that's been affected by staff shortages caused by Covid. Yes, that little bug(ger) is still around and still making susceptible people ill. According to one paper I saw, 1.5M people have had some form of Covid for over 3 months, which constitutes Long Covid and some have suffered quite severe illness that has been recurrent. All because some morons in China caught some bush meat, fruitbats, and they were infected by a novel virus while doing so. Serves them right, bush meat, unless there is no farmed equivalent available, is disgusting especially when it appears on the menus of expensive US or European restaurants.

I'm reading reports of Russian cruelty and barbarism in Ukraine and while I'm sure most Russian people are decent enough, there seems to be a significant number who act like savages with hundreds of Ukrainians being executed in towns near Kyiv. These are war crimes but I doubt anyone will ever be prosecuted for it, if you recall they tried to poison two Russians in Salisbury a few years ago with Novichok, both survived though some months later a member of the public died through contact with the poison which was disguised as expensive perfume. To my mind, Russian intelligence agents trying to kill people who were naturalised British citizens on British soil is an act of war.

It reminded me of being in Cyprus and visiting Aphrodite's bath, a cave that always has water in it, even in summer and watching the antics of a Russian man and his delinquent son who were lobbing stones into the pond inside the cave trying to see a giant ell that's supposed to live there. It was an act of vandalism at an ancient site and I came close to shoving them both in it but resisted the urge in case they polluted the pond with their disgusting bodies.

I suppose as well, seeing how many times they've tried to kill me or the Cameron family, over the past few years or create bad propaganda about individuals or the bank generally, and it's unlikely that I should like Russians, also the president whose lunacy created this war in the first place and which is being run very badly against a country which has had to beg, borrow or steal weapons to resist one of the largest armies in the world and this week, we hear they sank a battlecruiser, the Russian's flagship. It shows that Putin and his inner coterie got it all wrong and that the competence and reputation of the Russian military, are exaggerated. However, Russia is still a nuclear power as Putin keeps reminding us, presumably to stop NATO from being drawn into the equation, which could pull in the Chinese as well and before you know it a world war has begun.

I was musing on these while hiding large bars of chocolate that I'd bought for the children as well as Simon and Stella as their Easter eggs. I've said before that those are a rip-off and a bar of chocolate is much better value but even that is shrinking as the prices increase with inflation and other causes like the war in Ukraine.

Something I hadn't appreciated was that Ukraine is a major supplier of wheat and that Russia is one of white fish. I eat both so am watching their prices very carefully.

"Are we doin' anythin' for Easter?" asked Trish who appears to only have twenty-five letters in her alphabet, the G seems absent.

"I don't think so, sweetheart, why?"

"Well, half my class have gone away and we never do anythin' like that, do we?"

"Not for bank holidays, sadly many of those people who were hoping to go abroad are likely to spend as much time waiting for their planes or ferries as they do on actual holiday."

"We coulda gone to Scotland, no planes or ferries needed for that, is there?"

"Whenever it is raised as a possible destination for a holiday, you always say no, why the change of heart?" I have to watch this one like a hawk while trying to work out what the real question is.

"Sarah hasn't seen it has she?"

"Sarah has only been with us five minutes and at the moment there are other priorities before Stanebury. When you're older, I'm sure if you speak nicely to your father, he'll let you go up there as you want."

"When I'm older, it's always when I'm bloody well older. I suppose the same will apply to the villa on Menorca, will it?"

"Possibly, why?"

"We never go anywhere, we've got houses all over the place but we never go there."

"What would you like to do, go to Bristol?"

"I dunno, do I? But it woulda been nice to do something." She stomped off and I still wasn't sure what she wanted. Was it to go away, to be entertained or what? She didn't seem to understand that Si and I work so hard that just being home for a few days is so good for boosting energy levels before we sink beneath all the paperwork and disappear completely. They said paperwork would be redundant by about 2010 and here we are in 2022 and it seems to be just as bad as ever. The only people who seem to have prospered are the utilities who no longer send out bills but send you an email instead. It's like supermarkets who con you into doing your own checkout on an automated till or take some sort of reader around with you and click it as you pick goods up and the banks are just as bad. I sent Julie and Phoebe some cash for Easter through the bank, shove in my card put in their account details and how much, and it's done in seconds. I could do it via my computer but I don't trust online banking, especially as I get things wrong on the computer as often as I get it right.

I did some research on invertebrates and the Riverfly project recently and had problems with some of the papers i wanted to look at, couldn't even get them to show me their abstracts. I called the library several times but none of them was terribly helpful, it was only when I spoke to a young Scotsman on the library helpline that I got some explanation and a solution.

Apparently, some websites use add-ons and those can react with other sites and block you from using them, which is beyond the library's control. However, by going in on the incognito version of Google, I found the papers I wanted and either read what I wanted or downloaded them with no problem. So I knew what I'd be doing over the weekend given a chance - reading these papers to bring myself up to date on how they sample invertebrates these days, might be an idea if I check my equipment too, nets and trays ID guides, some of which I've had since I was about twelve when I used to go pond dipping quite a lot. Did some at A-level and a bit when I was at Sussex, but I ended up doing small mammals and I suppose I shouldn't complain because I've done really quite well.

Danni came to see me when I was sorting through my aquatic survey equipment. "Muuum, what's all this I hear about British Cycling stopping a trans woman racing against other women?"

"Oh, it's a typical overreaction by a sport when someone complains about the issue, it'll settle down eventually when we get common sense instead of opinions, why?"

"Well, is it gonna happen in soccer next?"

"Why should it? Besides you're probably the only one playing professional women's soccer."

"Yeah, but Emily Bridges is just one there, too."

"Well, your club knows, the FA know, has anyone said anything yet?"

"No, but it's gotta be just a marrer of time, init?"

"Speak properly, Danielle, you're not a stevedore or a barrow boy."

"Wossamatta with 'ow i speaks?" she said deliberately to wind me up but I wasn't playing.

"Juist ye watch yer ting no gets stuck in yer chaft, ye wee nyaff," I said quickly back to her in as broad a Glaswegian accent as I could, I didn't use 'Jimmy' as a form of address but otherwise I knew she'd have difficulty deciphering it.
"What?" she said looking completely bemused.

"You heard what I said."

"Yeah, but I didn't understand it."

"Perhaps because I was speaking in dialect."

"You was talkin' like Gramps only worse."

"Wha wis takkin' like me?" announced Daddy had arrived.

"Mummy was."

"Aye, weel, she's Scots, sae whit dae ye expect?"

"But she talks normally most of the time."

"She's complaining because I replied to her trying to be clever by talking like someone from the dockyard."

"I was just talkin' Pompey, Gramps an' she spouted this Scottish gibberish which I didn't understand."

"Whit did ye say?" he asked me.

"Juist ye watch yer ting no gets stuck in yer chaft, ye wee nyaff,"

He roared and Danni stood there looking even more confused.

"What did she say to me?" she asked her grandpa.

"Be careful yer tongue disnae get stuck in yer cheek, ye scallywag."

"Duh!" exclaimed Danielle before she turned around and left daddy and I in the big cupboard off the utility room, where I was looking at my hand net. "They're all barmy," she said loudly as she left.

Daddy just roared with laughter and I had to admit I was chuckling too.