Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 975 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

If twenty six is old to a sixteen year old, I must seem ancient to my other charges–and what of Stella and Simon, they’re both older than I am, and Tom must be the closest thing to Methuselah they’re ever likely meet.

Oh well, I’m sure age is one of those things whose perspective changes in respect to one’s own age. I’ll let you know in a decade or two–crikey, I’ll be mid forties then–shit, that is old.

I went into the kitchen and put the vegetables on to cook, then checked the duck. In addition to the sauce made with stock, fresh orange juice and Cointreau, I’d laid a slice of orange on each piece. It was all cooking nicely and would be ready in half an hour.

At almost exactly six the doorbell rang and Stephanie appeared as I opened the door. “Your punctuality is perfect,” I noted.

“Yes, I try to keep it punctilious, full stop,” she punctuated her response.

“Are all psychiatrists crazy?” I asked.

“Dotty as dalmations,” she laughed, “Comes from associating with strange people who masquerade as patients–I mean imagine anyone being daft enough to ask you to arrange someone to remove their gonads.”

“Ooh, that was below the belt,” I riposted.

“Well, that’s where gonads usually are. Right, how near is dinner?”

“Well literally, it’s about twenty feet away in the kitchen but we’ll be ingesting in there,” I pointed to the dining room.

“How near in time are we to dining?” she asked rephrasing her question.

“There’s a clock in the dining room, but the grandfather clock is here in the hall, so maybe twenty feet again.”

She glared at me, “What time do we eat?” she said loudly.

“Oh that? Whenever you’re ready–It’s all cooked, just needs to be dished up.”

“Okay, we’ll dine first then I’ll see Julie.”

“Fine–Trish,” I called my second in command, she came trotting out to the hall, “Show Dr Cauldwell to the table please and then call the others.”

I resumed my operations in the kitchen and a few minutes later carried out plates of food to the table. Everyone helped themselves to vegetables, although I noticed Julie was less exuberant over her food than she usually was.

Stephanie talked mainly to the children asking how school was and that sort of thing, but I was aware of a theme behind the way she questioned the children. Julie was left out of the questions except in a very general way, and conversation with the adults was very limited. She declined the wine that Tom offered because she was driving, instead accepting some apple juice which Stella passed around.

I don’t think the object of her questions–Trish–ever noticed she was under inspection. Stephanie asked her directly about school then confirmed things by talking with the other two girls. Then she checked out her social interactions by speaking with the boys. I can only assume that she was happy with the answers because she smiled at Trish and seemed contented afterwards.

The duck was delicious, even though I say so myself and the slice of orange on top of each portion added to the presentation of the meal which, with the exception of Julie, was eaten with gusto by the others.

“That was superb, Cathy, and where did you get that ice cream–ooh, if I eat any more I won’t fit any of my clothes.”

“Aren’t they supposed to fit you, not the other way round?” I asked.

“When they cost as much as they do–no; I try to fit them, it’s cheaper to lose weight than buy new.”

“It’s certainly cheaper–this constant need for novelty amongst consumers worries me as an ecologist.”

“Consumerism worries me as a human being, the suffix tending to indicate it’s a belief system–which I fear is probably true.”

“You fear the belief or that you are correct?” asked Stella.

Stephanie looked at her for a moment before saying, “A bit of both, materialism is self destructive because it is ultimately insatiable, consumerism or consuming is an act of materialism. It all depends upon material wealth, which while we all need a certain amount, is taken to absurd levels by some people.”

“Are you trying to tell me that money can’t bring happiness?” Stella queried.

“In essence, yes, but that won’t stop people trying to find out the hard way.” Stephanie replied, “Many of the people I see as patients believe that unless they have loadsa money, they will be disempowered. They don’t see that if that is their goal, they should be building slowly in a career to achieve that–such as business or one of the higher paid professions. No they want it now, and they don’t seem to want to work for it–then they get depressed because they aren’t able to have the latest everything. It’s all so silly, but they get very distressed by it.”

“Isn’t that to do with advertising?” I chucked in my two pennorth, “Selling dreams instead of reality, based on a system which common sense tells us is unsustainable.”

“Cathy the philosopher,” Stephanie smiled. “In one respect I agree entirely. However, my job is to help those who come unstuck and have emotional problems as a result.”

“But you’re treating symptoms, why not the cause?”

“Because yon whole bloody system’ll collapse, o’ course it’s built on sand, capitalism is unsoond, like ‘n inverted pyramid, allus ready to fa’ doon on top o’ thae heids o’ thae lot o’ them. Serve ‘em richt, tae.”

I wondered why I liked Tom so much, we held such similar views except on religion–he participated, I despised from a distance.

Stephanie took Julie off to Tom’s study as he was going out to a meeting, and after clearing up, we all played a game of Dingbats. No prizes for guessing that Trish would win and that either Billy or Meems would come last. However, they all had fun because they didn’t play in a competitive way and spent most of the time laughing.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the game where you have to guess a well known phrase or word from a pictogram. Some of them are easy some are quite obscure–none evaded the Trish, who trashed them easily; so much so that while Stella and I were making drinks, she suggested they rename the game, Trish-Trash.

“You realise she’s cleverer than the rest of us put together?” Stella opined.

“Don’t you think I know, her headmistress reckons she has an IQ of between one forty and one sixty.”

“Isn’t that genius level?”

“Yep–real rocket scientist stuff.”

“So what will you do?”

“Try and keep her feet on the ground, stop her living in her head as she grows up. Remember very intelligent people still do stupid things, and are no better at controlling their feelings than those of us lesser mortals.”

“You’d think they would, wouldn’t you?”

“No, Stella, the two systems aren’t necessarily integrated, emotion is more primitive than intellect, and often dominant. Remember Isaac Newton was a nasty piece of work, despite his huge brain.”

“So they say, but I thought that was because he was a Capricorn.” Her smile conveyed an element of innocence but I saw the smirk underneath it and smiled back at her disguised disingenuousness.

“Yep, it’s all to do with our horoscopes,” I agreed sarcastically; “don’t blame me I’m a Sagittarian.”

“Exactly,” she said.