The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1621 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I awoke with some surprise to see the sunshine bursting through the crack in the curtains and wondered if I’d overslept. It was five to seven, the alarm would switch the radio on any moment and as most news is bad news, I pressed the off switch and lay there watching the sunshine and listening to the birds.

Sparrows chirped and a goldfinch twittered somewhere nearby, I could hear strains of blackbird and dunnock interspersed with robin and great tit. Not far away a chaffinch made me wonder about the term songbird, and the pigeon hoo-hooing on the roof made me decide to get up. It wasn’t quite a dawn chorus but it was better than Messrs Humphrys and Naughtie.

A dog barked as I was dressing and I recognised it as Kiki, glancing out of the window I saw Tom bringing her back from her walk and she was dancing round him in the drive way, barking as went. I slipped downstairs and put the kettle on as Tom was wiping her feet–we’d had too many squabbles about dirty feet on my clean floor, so now he usually wiped her down, which made her smell a little better as well, spaniel ronk is not the best aroma with which to start the day.

“Whit nae bairns thae morn?”

“I’m going to have a cuppa first and then get them up.”

“Whit aboot Simon?”

“Whit aboot–I mean what about him?”

“He’ll be late fa’ work.”

“No he won’t he’s got the morning off, he has a meeting this afternoon, but that’s all.”

“Och some people hae an easy life.”

“Would you consider being married to me, easy then?”

“Och, it’s a sair fecht, so it is.” He filled his mug with treacle like coffee which I’m sure he buys cheaply as slurry from oil refineries, picked up my Guardian and disappeared into his study. I made my tea and drank it, then took Simon up a cup of coffee.

From then on it was all systems go and I chivvied the children and chased them down for breakfast as soon as they were dressed. Meems was having awful trouble doing up her cardi, she kept missing the opposing buttonhole so her cardi looked skew-whiff. She got angrier and angrier with it and in the end I had to intervene and do it up for her. She didn’t like it, but the way she was going she’d have been at it all morning.

At school, I of course bumped into Sister Maria. “Guess who we’ve got coming to speak to the sixth form this afternoon?”

“I have no idea.”

“Go on have a guess.”

“Mother Theresa.”

“Lady Cameron, please be serious.”

“The Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“This is a catholic school if you remember.”

“I have no idea.”

“You know him.”

“I know him? Not my pa in law?”

“Erm–no,”

“Thank goodness for that. I give up.”

“Matthew Hines.”

“Oh, that all.”

“Oh c’mon, Lady Cameron, he is quite dishy, I know all the girls fancy him like mad.”

“Even the lesbian ones?” I asked pointedly. She gave me a sour look and I smirked.

“That is not funny.”

“No it’s queer.” I smirked again and she shook her head.

“I only told you because I wondered if you’d like to make his acquaintance again.”

“Is his wife coming?”

“That I don’t know.”

“It’s her you want to talk to the children, she’s far more interesting than he is.”

“Oh–perhaps a future speaker.”

I nodded encouragingly, it would make it a bit longer before she pounced on me again. I think she might have read my mind because she gave me a very old fashioned look before shaking her head again. “She’s really nice and far more down to earth than he is.”

“She’s a model, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know if she’s still doing the catwalk stuff, but she was in the top bracket along with Kate Moss and Heidi Klum.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t a model,” she threw at me.

“Too short, most of them are six footers.”

“You make them sound like insects,” she sniggered and I chuckled at the prospect of haute couture dresses being worn by insects.

“What about that Australian man who looks so attractive in dresses?”

“Andrej Pejic?”

“Is that his name, he’s absolutely beautiful isn’t he?”

“Yes and I admire his refusal to be defined by anything other than what he wants to do. Apparently he suffers quite a lot trying to keep his weight down.”

“I suppose lots of the girls do too, they appear sometimes as stick insects, painfully thin.”

“Indeed, headmistress. I must be going, loads to do.”

“I expect you have, well if you’d like to hear what Matthew has to say feel free to come along at two o’clock.”

“I suspect I’d be something of a distraction to the poor man, but please give him my regards and to his wife as well. I hope their baby girl is well.”

“As you wish, Lady Cameron, I’ll certainly pass on your greetings to him and his family. I still think the two of you made a wonderful pair of Macbeths.”

“Um–I think I’d better be going, headmistress, loads to do.” I almost ran back to my car–the last thing I needed today was to be caught by Matt, okay the acting with him was fun while it lasted and I enjoyed meeting his wife, but we operate in different worlds–theirs is all glamour and luvvies mine is my family and the mundane, and I wouldn’t swap with them for all the tea in China.

In fact if I’d wanted I could have persuaded Si to take me to parties and clubs and we could have lived the good life until one us had liver failure or got into drugs and things. Instead he seemed happy to support my eschewal of the bright life for family life and we collected all our waifs and strays and enjoyed all their adventures too. Compared to that, the triumphs and tribulations of living with a bunch of misfits and melding them into a family, doing the clubs and parties of the A-listers sounds rather tame.

I thought back over some of the experiences I’d had, some I’d have preferred not to have happened but that’s life. On which stuck in my mind was the incident when Trish ran into the apple tree and nearly brained herself–for a short time she seemed to think she was Patrick again, which passed after some healing although she then became blind.

The episode with the bear with the sore head–which was one of those lucid dreams I occasionally have–remains with me to this day, so bizarre was it. I mean a talking bear, but then in dreams anything can happen–or at least in mine they do.

I did some shopping and went home. Part of me wanted to see Matt, if only to say hello, but thankfully the sensible bit prevailed–at least until lunch time.