The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3471 by Angharad Copyright© 2024/2025 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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We parked my Jag in the multi-storey car park at Southampton General and I brushed off any crumbs from my coat and trousers. Danni, did the same although she was wearing a skirt. It surprised me a little as she is usually in jeans. She chatted about it to me saying she felt like a transvestite wearing it, and I replied that I thought transvestites wore them more frequently than she did. She laughed. I was scanning all around us as we walked to the ward where Meems was and I caught sight of movement slightly behind us. I told Danni to be ready to run if I said so and she nodded. As the movement got closer, I shouted for her to go and watched her rocket off ahead of me. I was running quite quickly but she was in a different league.

A man raced after us and I just managed to run inside the door as he nearly caught me. Danni picked up a chair and threw it at him just as I managed to shut the door, open it and shut it again with his head in it. I banged it hard and he dropped to the ground. Now we would have at least one more enemy as I was sure he'd feel it was personal. I suppose it was but only because he'd asked for it by chasing us. The police were called once it was ascertained that the man was in no immediate danger of dying. "You'll have to hit him harder next time, Mum," advice offered by Danni not entirely shared by the plod.

They were thinking of prosecuting me for grievous bodily harm, but there were enough witnesses to say he was chasing us, which assumes for nefarious purposes, as neither of us knew him and then the police searched him and found both a flick-knife and a pistol in his coat. The plod had a very visible change of heart and arrested him. carrying guns and knives can carry considerable prison sentences. We were delayed getting to Meems because of this fracas in the entrance to the hospital and the police having to do everything in triplicate, even though they had identified the would-be assailant as a member of a gang and with a history of violence including, wounding with intent and intimidation of witnesses. Obviously, not someone you want your daughter to go out with.

We got to see Meems, Chas made a tactical withdrawal and left us girls to talk. Meems told us what she remembered about the accident which was very little. I suppose if you don't see it coming and then get swept up by a car, breaking a leg on landing and losing consciousness almost immediately, you wouldn't remember too much. Add to that the amnesia of trauma and perhaps it was just as well she didn't. She was a bit different with Shiner. He had been acting strangely for weeks and she had challenged him several times because of it. She had also informed her line manager at the university that he was acting oddly.

Danni asked how was he acting oddly, was he swinging from the chandeliers or something? Meems looked at her sister as if she was mad, then explained what she considered odd. He was a lecturer, like her, but he was losing his student's work, forgetting where he supposed to be and generally acting as if he was preoccupied much of the time. I suggested he sounded distracted, possibly because he owed rather a deal of money to some very unhelpful people, who didn't mind if they recovered it plus their ridiculous interest payment or took it out of his body, sometimes very viciously.

"So why did Shiner attack you, you weren't involved in anything," I asked Meems.

Her reply was quite interesting, "I didn't understand when they told me who they thought it was," she said, continuing, "I suppose I had informed the university about him. I felt I had to. I was working in a room next to his and I had to go in and ask them to turn down the volume because I was trying to teach. He was either late or absent for quite a few of his classes.

I suggested if he was suspended or sacked, paying back those gangsters he had mistakenly borrowed from was never going to happen.

Meems remembered seeing him slide a small packet to a student which she considered might be on drugs. She reported that to her manager who became very interested. Universities usually have a definite policy towards drug use and an academic supplying them became a serious issue. She was seen as the informant of the drug deals and being a general busybody, except that doesn't apply to Meems, she is a very nice person who would only say anything for genuine reasons. As she had tipped off the university to someone acting strangely and supplying drugs, usually, cocaine, she had made an enemy of both Shiner and the county lines gang.

I wondered if the people who use such drugs, especially cocaine, realised the problems they caused with their selfish and disgusting habits. The drug runners were often school kids or reluctant mules; violence was often a feature of their lives, either against them or by them to intimidate others. Drug use often led to other crimes, especially theft in order to raise the money needed to purchase the drugs. Murder amongst gangs was not unusual, usually by knife, but not exclusively. It just seemed to me that generally standards were falling and that applied to every level of society, those that we once looked up to were just as corrupt as the criminal classes. We saw the church in a new light, and it seemed the Anglican was as bad as the Church of Rome in corrupting young people or abusing them and spoiling their lives.

The selfishness of these paedophiles in cassocks, whatever the denomination, had a lasting effect on young lives, especially from those who should have been protecting them. It made me very cross. It made me all the angrier when I saw that some of these creeps were actively campaigning against gender or sexual minorities. I was doubly annoyed because the science is tending to suggest that gender dysphoria was created in the womb, so transgendered people were victims of unfortunate circumstances over which they have no control, but it's seen as a chosen lifestyle, not desperately trying to deal with a very painful life as a person they know they are not. Admittedly, there are degrees of severity, not everyone feels that they have to have to have surgery to change to as near a physical resemblance of their chosen gender by having their bodies altered surgically, but we know that enough of us do to keep the surgeons and psychiatrists busy.

Why there is such an outcry as there appears in America, puzzles me. We are a relatively small minority, about 0.5% of the population, and full of individuals who are often in poverty or unable to gain employment, frequently with mental health issues brought on by very long waiting lists, poverty, alienation, and general disdain, Why? I've never understood the reasons because again trans people are often cleverer than average, often have enormous resilience and deserved as much help as any minority group. Yet, they are seen as something equivalent to dog's mess that you get on your shoe.

If you can't help what you are through circumstance of birth anymore than you can control your skin or eye colour, why should people see us with such disdain? Is it because the word sex appears in common parlance, 'sex change', 'sex inversion', or is because men want to change from high status to an inferior one, that of female, which in itself is disgraceful. I won't say women are blameless, but they cause a fraction of the world's problems, most are by men who assert their larger bodies and smaller brains on a regular basis.

We know that in a balanced society men and women are equal but it doesn't take much effort to destroy that equilibrium, as today's US demonstrates. If you divide and conquer as Trump has, putting men and women against each other, the balance is lost as men control budgets and power. Women control their families - sometimes and often that is lost to the paternal side, traditionalist women often not helping, as logic determines that men and women are of equal status but bringing different gifts to the equation. Women listen and are sensitive, emotionally aware and generally more caring, men are not, they are competitive, often don't listen - they don't need to. They are more violent and control things, to which many feel they have a god-give right. As there is no god, how can that be? Arguments for male supremacy are like arguing in favour of global climate change. Talk to people who lost their homes in California recently. Everything is so fucked up at the moment, it's going to take generations to put right, if ever and gangsters like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu will take advantage of it while they can.

It seems the right of politics is in the ascendancy until they cause a major war and minorities are expendable to them because they cost money and thereby reduce the millionaires' profits. Remember, that in the general scheme of things money is more important than life, how else could so many people be in danger of starvation or ill health through poverty?

The gangsters who were out to harm my daughter are like the extreme right, money is power and they want it all. Sadly they have come up against a family who has more money than they ever will and possibly better connections to the seats of power in this country. They may not appreciate this for the moment but they will and then real hardball will happen. I hope that we can stop things before that occurs, or things will get messy.

They appear to have found me, not too difficult a task. I am quite well known in academic circles. If they linked to me from my daughter, Meems, they may not know we own a bank, about the third or fourth biggest in the UK. I think I'm going to have to call in the big guns and go for wipe out as soon as I can or risk more casualties amongst my family and friends. As we walked back to the car, eyes scanning all around us, I phoned Henry. Of course he was out but I left a voice mail on his account to call me urgently.

I had taken things up a level, I would have to wait until he came back to me, doing whatever fire-fighting was required locally until he did. Oh boy, was I frustrated, no not that way, well perhaps I was, but with not being able to deal with things that needed to be resolved. I could scream, "Arrrghh." It didn't help, oh bugger!