The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1206 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

When I got to the restaurant in the hospital, Simon rushed up and got me a cuppa and a piece of cake.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“It’s an improvised birthday cake.”

“Gee thanks–a carrot cake birthday cake–oh well, a first time for everything.”

“It was the best I could do at short notice.”

“I know, I appreciate all you do for me, even if I don’t always show it,” I felt embarrassed but tried to show I was aware that I didn’t always seem grateful for what he did.

“So, what d’you think of the car?”

“It’s lovely, Simon, thank you so much.”

“I’m glad you like it. The sports models are lovely but impractical for all you carry, maybe when the kids are bigger I’ll get you a sports model.”

“I’ll be too old then.”

“Nah, you’ll always seem a bit racy to me–a woman of mystery.”

“Me? I’m an open book, typical Sagittarius, what you see is what you get.”

“And you’ve always been this way?” he looked questioningly at me.

“Yes, why?”

“I’m just thinking about when we first met.”

I blushed, “Well the bits you could see–you got.” He snorted and choked on his cup of tea, coughing and spluttering and getting very red in the face.

We chatted and I ate my piece of cake and drank my tea then I drove us home–the car really was a lovely drive once I got used to driving a truck sized thing. Then I had to take the kids out in it, which meant two trips but it was a nice way to spend my birthday.

When we got home the second time, Simon told me he’d booked a table for two at a very nice restaurant for eight o’clock. I did jacket potatoes for the others and while I was making a pot of tea, Julie came into the kitchen carrying a birthday cake with a single candle on it.

“Where did that come from?” I asked half hoping she hadn’t made it herself.

“The cake shop in town, Daddy asked them to make one for you. Grampa Henry collected it earlier.”

“Oops, I clean forgot about him, he was supposed to be viewing the damage with Simon.”

“Oh he phoned saying they couldn’t view anything until after the snow cleared and the engineers certified the site as safe.”

“So when will he be able to get his car back?” I hated to think what sort of state it was in.

“Oh yes, his car is at the garage–the windscreen cracked so they’re replacing it, should be ready tomorrow if the delivery comes in.”

“What the windscreen delivery?”

“I presume that’s what he meant.” Julie looked perplexed for a moment, then nodded, “I’m sure that’s what it was.”

“Perhaps you’d like to go and tell him while I take my tea and feed the baby.” My breasts felt quite full and I thought I could hear her squeaking. Her face lit up when I approached her cot and she cooed at me, and I said to her, “Mama, mama.”

She looked at me and cooed and gurgled so I repeated it over and over–well it works with budgerigars. She was more interested in my chest–she definitely takes after her adoptive father–and suckled on me as soon as I opened my bra.

Jenny came in and brought me a birthday card, “Sorry I missed you this morning.”

“That’s okay, thanks for the card.”

Just then, Baby C pulled her mouth off my breast and shrieked at Jenny, then said, “Ma-ma,” then bit me on the nipple–little swine.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Jenny.

“I think I did, and I haven’t heard her say that before.”

“Well thank you, you little maggot, for a lovely birthday present.” As if to acknowledge it she then shrieked again and nearly burst my eardrums.

“Are you okay to sit tonight? Simon’s taking me out for dinner.”

“Of course, I think you had asked me earlier.”

“Did I? I’m sure I’m losing the plot.”

“Simon was saying something about you saving two lives at the hospital, and he broke his leg which you fixed.”

I told her the story as I understood it.

“So, you think he fell and broke his leg to get you to the hospital so you could save these two people?”

“That’s what Ken Nicholls seemed to think, I prefer to believe it was meaningful coincidence.”

“Very meaningful–you don’t believe in God, do you?”

“Nope–and nothing has made me change my mind.”

“So what caused you to be at the hospital then?”

“Pure coincidence.”

“Couldn’t it have been Divine intervention?”

“No–if there was a God, why did He need me–no if He’s so bloody clever and omnipotent, why does He need the middleman, surely He could do it all Himself?”

“But what else could set it up?”

“Who says it was set up? It could just be coincidence–perhaps we create these things ourselves?”

“How d’you mean?” Jenny seemed interested and until I finished feeding tiny wee, I couldn’t do anything much anyway, so let’s have a religious debate.

“Perhaps we are masters of our own destinies, causing and controlling far more than we realise. For all I know we emit energies which attract certain things to us including events and people.”

“Did you attract Stella that first day you met?”

“Perhaps I did, unconsciously–needing a boost to move on in my life.”

“So today, who attracted who–did the injured people send for you or did you send for them?”

“I have no idea. But if we examine Divine intervention stuff, did they have to suffer just for me save them? It’s a bit spiteful, making a child suffer to achieve, I don’t know what. I mean what did it prove?”

“That you’re a very special lady?”

“We knew that already.”

“But you healed Simon’s leg, and two seriously injured people–was it just part of a training programme?”

I certainly hadn’t thought of that. Okay, I realise that it seems the light is using me as an instrument–which I sometimes feel resentful towards as there was no initial discussion or agreement that I should do it. So if it’s training me, what is the ultimate goal? That is frightening in some respects and if it’s happening to me, it’s presumably happening to others–but why?

Whatever the reason, if there is one and this isn’t just some random event, which it could be and in which we read more organisation than it deserves because we’re programmed to look for patterns–be it a face in the spots on a carpet or in events in the external world: what’s driving it all? For some, God or some other half-baked idea. I was minded of a report of some interview on radio or TV that a bishop and Richard Dawkins were both supposed to be talking on. The slot was five minutes and the bishop went first and used up four of the precious minutes which exasperated Dawkins, who when asked why he was cross replied, ‘Well at least I don’t have to rely on some imaginary friend’–one of his better put downs.

What is controlling this then? If it’s not some Creator or Demiurge, is it the universe? Or Gaia? Bit of a cop out to my thinking. For all I know it could be some little alien on the planet Zog, who does it all with his smart phone a teleporter remote control and a goldfish bowl.

“She’s gone to sleep,” Jenny observed and nodded at the baby. She had too, my nipple still in her mouth, but she was miles away.