The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3370 by Angharad Copyright© 2022 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 had been a couple of weeks since I'd heard from James, he'd told me until he had something it was pointless for him to talk to me to tell me nothing. He'd also been working on another case for someone which had consumed much of his time. When I complained about not being his priority he told me he was waiting for some of his contacts to come back to him, until then, it was like trying to capture clouds.

The phone rang one morning and I hoped it was James, as Francesca was becoming despondent about anyone finding her mother. It wasn't James, it was Jason. "I have had a reply to a letter I sent to the FA, at least a couple of months ago."

"Oh yes," I said but felt it was a lost cause.

"They are trying to tell me that transgender players going from male to female are excluded from playing at organised levels because, after a male puberty, they have bigger hearts and lungs and also have greater bone density and can harm cisgender females who have weaker bones."

"Neither Danny nor Trish have had male puberties."

"I wondered if they had or not, especially Danni."

"She hasn't and they run any test they like, she was devoid of testosterone by age twelve and on female hormones by age thirteen. She didn't have a male puberty so her body is becoming increasingly female, as happens to cisgender girls. So they can't use that as an excuse. Plus she has been seen by their doctors, so they should know that too if they don't, it doesn't say a lot about their medics."

"Oh good, now I have something with which to challenge them, if and when they deign to reply. I might add we are considering suing for discrimination. It tends to focus their minds a bit."

"How will they manage to eat or drink if we are occupying the attention of their single brain cell?"

"That's their problem, I'm quite enjoying this again now." He rang off and my thought was, that I was glad somebody was, it certainly wasn't Danni or me. Mind you, we had much bigger fish to fry, dealing with Francesca's dilemma. When she had refused to plead guilty to a charge of murder, but accepted one of manslaughter when defending herself and Danni, which the Crown Prosecution Service took a while to accept.

Nowadays, I wonder if we plead justifiable homicide because he had gone completely unresponsive to her other attempts to cause him to stop. He was in total rage which was transphobic and probably homophobic as well because he was said to claim no one could change gender, therefore Danni was trying to mask his homosexuality. If that was the case how come she was infatuated by Francesca unless she was lesbian?

Personally, I think all these labels miss the point. We have this urge to pigeonhole all things, I know, I have taught classification and while it brings some order to chaos, people are a bit different and should we care if two men or two women want to be together and seek to make the union a legal one. Surely, that is between the two concerned and only them. Once you start to widen it, it becomes full of various opinions which are mostly irrelevant and probably irrational as well.

While a parent my be concerned that their son or daughter is going to marry someone unsuitable, if the child tells them, 'too bad, that's who I am going to marry,' it's probably a 50/50 chance that the parents will cope with it or sometimes tell their child to chose either their partner or their parents, in which case they are likely to lose their offspring. It's very fraught and I have seen how unhappy it makes so many young people. Why should a lecturer try to help them through it, we should be educating them not holding their hands..

Families, are either wonderful or awful but they do have a powerful influence on our daily lives and decisions. I suspect my parents may have considered my relationship with Simon as being homosexual, certainly before he became enfeebled by his stroke and I would possibly have changed his mind by blackmail, such as not asking Simon to push him down the pub occasionally, which was the only pleasure he had towards the end, which Simon was happy to indulge him when he could.

If the stroke hadn't happened, would he have liked the fact that I had a boyfriend who wanted to marry me? Especially, when he realised that Simon was my social superior by a few levels and was very wealthy in his own right. Would he have tried to prevent me from having surgery? I'll never know, thankfully. All I can say was that my father changed quite a lot after the stroke and I am sure it was because he became vulnerable. The only way that I believe he may have accepted me, was if I'd gone home to keep house for him when my mother died. Whether he'd have been happy for me to go all girly was debatable, I suspect not but he might have recognized my role as that of replacing my mother in supporting him, but it would have been about his need rather than mine. Realizing this as soon as my mum died, I would never have agreed to it and I suspect that Stella would have counselled against it.

It didn't happen instead the old devil had a stroke and everything changed including me, I negotiated from a position of strength and never looked back. Did I feel guilty, yes, of course I did, but the hell he'd caused me as a child when it was obvious that I was more girl than boy, meant I'd never give him power over me again so it was my way or I took the highway. I gave him the facts of life and he could like it or lump it, he gave way and I'm prepared to say I probably bullied him, to which I would just say touché.

Anyway, it's all water under the bridge, and although I loved him most of my life, I certainly didn't like him but seeing as I can't hold a grudge against a live person it seems doubly stupid to do so with a dead one. So I don't. He was my dad, and I loved him, but he was very flawed as a dad, whereas Tom Agnew isn't. He's a brilliant dad and a wonderful and indulgent granddad.

Jason had suggested we use Kit Mitten for Francesca as her main defence counsel as he specialised in criminal law. I of course argued that she had done nothing criminal, mind you if James or I had seen him beating Danni into unconsciousness he or I might have well done so. Instead, she is up for trial and I still have my darling daughter albeit a somewhat grumpy one.

I tried to remember that I had a busload of other children who saw me as their mother, so I had to get on with life and deal with them as they also had needs and I had more or less invited everyone here, so I had no one to blame but myself.

Cate chasing Bramble brought me back to reality. If she caught her there would likely be squeals as the feline one defended herself by scratching her on the hand, she's generally very good and only usually scratches the children's hands, whereas most cats would scratch wherever the fancy took them or opportunity presented itself. If she started removing eyeballs, she would find herself moved to a childfree home.

Actually, I think she enjoys a certain amount of attention, she is still young and likes to be chased, in the same way as she likes to ambush the dog who isn't as young and she often runs off in surprise with Bramble giving chase. Okay, Kiki is a wimp and Bramble a trainee psycho, but like so much in this family, it's all back to front but we cope. A moment later Bramble shot back out of the dining room and seemed to wait for Cate to give chase again before accelerating like a Porsche 911 and up the stairs as a feline possessed. Of course, Cate would follow until Bramble went under Trish's bed and hid while Cate called her but didn't find her.

The university was becoming boring and I wondered if I should find another career. The problem was I needed the academic status of being an academic in employment to fulfil my role for the bank. I'd asked Henry and had told me in uncertain terms that I could lose Billie's centre and was no use to them if I wasn't involved in a university somewhere. So I continued drawing my pay as professor and as director and ecological adviser. I had talked it over with Simon but he agreed with his dad, so I decided to go on a bit longer. I'd almost thought to ask Daddy, but he put me in this position so was unlikely to do much aboot it, as he would say. I did accept that no one forced me to become a professor, I accepted the role so would have try and do it. Occasionally, I felt good when something seemed to happen that I'd brought about despite the odds, sometimes it was worth it for that especially when I helped an underdog succeed when everyone else had written them off.

I took a hostile first year under my wing and gave them tutorials with me -- I don't normally mix with first years, I'm too important. I was covering an absent member of staff and I did a lecture which saw the first year humiliated. He tried to attack me as I went into my office. Instead of calling security I went with my intuitions and talked him down and found he was struggling. I should have suspended him, not with a rope, but on the course. It would have meant he'd get even further behind and left us owing pots of money and having nothing to show for it. Instead, I sat down and talked with him, listened to his complaints and caused him to change his attitude. Most men would change their socks first but he did it and within a couple of months, he was doing fine. It appeared all he needed was someone to believe in him. He caught me on a good day and I gave him the boost he needed. I di tutorials with him once a month for the whole of the first year, and helped him understand the bits he was stuck on, usually by just explaining what was happening, it's amazing how many of our students have not got a science background and don't understand jargon or technical terms despite us saying does everyone understand. They don't but at the same time, they feel they'd look stupid to all their mates wouldn't because the likelihood is their mates don't get it either, so one of them asking my help, could help all of them. If they were girls it probably would help all of them, though the chances one of them would have asked for help before then, instead, bravado happens and they all fail and lose goodness knows how much and an academic career.

I never did ask him if he coached his friends or if he watched them fail. He got a 2:1 a very respectable degree. What happened after that I don't know, but there are always one or two like him. It will depend on my mood as to whether I help them or no. If I've had a bad day, I am less likely to. So this angel is very flawed however much my children say otherwise, but I suspect we all have off days when an appeal to our higher self is a waste of time and yet others when we feel more sociable and decided to help someone. The Samaritan professor I am not, well not today I'm not.

Bramble had come downstairs ages ago and was hiding behind Kiki in the conservatory and I had shut the door which Cate can't reach to open. It was okay, she was still upstairs calling her. I gave the cat political asylum, though she probably needed the old-fashioned asylum because I'm sure she was bonkers, and as they say it takes one to know one.