The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1640 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

When I collected the girls Trish told me she’d been sent for by the headmistress, I played dumb.

“Oh, what she want to see you for?”

“I was fightin’.”

“You were what?” I turned round to see her and she roared with laughter.

“Gotcha,” she laughed and the other two conspirators also added to the noise, which went on to become a full-blown giggle fest.

I waited until sanity returned–I don’t know where it’s been except being absent most of my life–before I asked her if she had been to see Sister Maria.

“Yes, she told me that the nun who had told me I’d go to hell was misinformed and that I was a delightful young lady (raucous laughter from Livvie and Meems)–shrrup you two–and because I was good at heart, I’d go to heaven if I went anywhere. She asked me to keep it just between her an’ me and not say anything to the old nun who started it all.”

“Why was that?” asked Livvie.

“Because she’s old and set in her ways and doesn’t take kindly to learning new things.”

“Yes, that’s probably true of lots of elderly people,” I agreed.

“Is she as owd as Mummy?” asked Meems making me feel like Methuselah.

“Course she is, she’s probably nearly as old as Daddy–he’s older than Mummy.” Trish had a bit to learn about recognising the ages of people and even more about diplomacy.

“I suspect she’s more like Gramps’ age.”

“He’s not a silly auld galoot,” is he?” asked Trish.

“No of course not,” I confirmed.

“Oh yes he is, Mummy said he was.” Meems has a way of bringing you down to earth quicker than an unopened parachute. As I was likely to have said it about him I decided not to challenge her assertion.

I drove them home and they had a biscuit and a drink then went off to change into their playing clothes. Jacquie decided she could do with some air, so the three of them went out for a walk, with her taking our idiot spaniel with them.

That dog is so dumb–as soon as they produced the lead she danced all round the kitchen so they couldn’t fit it to her collar. Then as they were leaving, Trish who was holding said lead, walked one side of the table and Kiki went the other nearly strangling herself in the process. She was still coughing when they went out the door.

Danny asked for my help with his homework. As he asks so infrequently, I gave it my full attention. He was stuck on his science homework which was biology–I wonder why he asked me?

It was all about the amoeba–the single celled animalcule with the same IQ as George Dubya. He had to draw a picture of one to show all the bits–the nucleus, cytoplasm and so on. I told him we could do better than that, I had slides of them from my first year at Sussex.

I found them and Trish’s clever little microscope and we plugged it into the computer and after a bit of fiddling I was able to get it up on screen. He was suitably impressed. “Wow, if we had things like this to use, bugs would be much more fun.”

I printed him off a picture which he included in his work–it was stained with some sort of red stain–can’t remember which one now, so after playing about with photoshop, I managed to print him off one in shades of grey which he could then label. It was cheating, but I hope showed he had used some gumption–even if it belonged to me.

Then we researched it on wiki and found some very good clips of an amoeba moving and also one of it engulfing a diatom. He cited these clips in his homework and we also found a diagram of an amoeba with all the bits listed. Something I’d forgotten, if I’d ever learned it was that Amoeba proteus has 290 billion base pairs in its genome compared to 2.9 billion in the human genome. Danny asked me if that meant it evolved from humans? It was tempting to say yes, however, to explain what all that was about would have only confused him so I told him the higher animals had lost much of the primitive DNA sequences in their chromosomes and genes and that relatively simple or primitive creatures hadn’t. He could accept that even though he really didn’t quite know what I was talking about.

By the time the girls came back we’d finished his project and I went off to start making dinner while Trish complained about, “Who’s been using my microscope?” I told her she sounded like mummy bear in Goldilocks. I got a silly response–“Bears can’t use microscopes–silly Mummy.”

I then asked her which button they liked best on a video remote. She had no idea–the paws button–stupid. That made her laugh and she went off to tell it to the other two. Judging by the laughter emitting from the dining room, they thought it very funny.

Jacquie was feeding Catherine when I pulled the casserole from the oven–one I’d made earlier, and was waiting for the potatoes to cook before serving it. I called the locusts, saving some for Simon as he was working late.

The bonuses for High Street Bank plc were a bit down on last year, but I knew that Simon and Henry would certainly get their share of the profits, as would Stella who does little or nothing for them. I also realised that I’d get some more shares as a member of the family as would the children. I think Simon or the accountant told me I had at least a hundred thousand pounds worth of shares built up over the past couple of years. I found the whole thing mind boggling. I also knew Simon was expecting a bonus of at least half a million pounds and Henry would get two or three times that.

The American bank, the purchase and subsequent collapse was made a write off against tax and Simon’s attempts to recover the money was what had got him his bonus. It was so much easier with Robert Peston of the BBC explaining how things worked–a bit like me explaining things about an amoeba to Danny.

Simon came home tired but happy–his actual bonus was nearly a million, much of it payable in shares, which he was pleased about, the price had dipped a little so he got more for his award, which he reckoned was a good time to have them, and to sell them back to the bank a few years down the line when they were worth more. It was part of his pension plan.

I tried not to discuss things like that with him in case he told me something by unwitting disclosure–not that I’d do anything about it, insider dealing is a pretty serious offence–and we are squeaky clean.

It was getting close to bedtime for the girls, although being a Friday, they were allowed an extra half an hour. The phone rang and Trish got it. A moment later she seemed to put the handset down.

“Who was that?” I asked as Jacque and I cleared the debris from dinner.

“A wrong number, they wanted to speak to Joyce Watkins,”

Jacquie went very pale and slumped in a chair. “Why can’t they ever leave me in peace?” she sobbed, her head in her hands.