The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1654 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I decided that I would let Jacquie come to me when she was ready to tell me what she wanted to do. I’d got agreements that if she wanted to live with us as family, the rest of the motley crew were prepared to let her–which is as much as I could expect from them in principle.

It was then simply a case of waiting. It took another day. I’d taken the children to school–well the girls, Simon had taken Danny on his way to work–he tries to once a week, he knows that Danny gets a buzz from the ride in the Jaguar. I like it because it gives them a chance to bond. I reckon it’s easier for the girls, they wrap Simon round their little fingers by simple flirting. If Danny did that, I reckon Simon would be as worried as I’d be.

I’d done a supermarket shop on the way home and the queues were unimaginably bad–honestly, from the length of them, you’d think food was about to go on rationing. I know I shouldn’t make judgements, but the trolley loads some people buy astonish me. I had quite a load but there was one woman there who had two trolley loads–yeah–how’d you guess, I was behind her in the queue. She paid nearly two hundred pounds–and this is just an ordinary week.

Mind you, mine came to seventy odd quid and I didn’t have that many meals organised, but I did restock the fridge with some of the things I’d used recently. I also had to get more garlic and we’d used all the mushrooms and the salad stuff was running low–tomatoes and so on.

I got a special deal on a whole salmon, so that would do one full meal for the family plus some available for sandwiches or a salad the next day. Thankfully, I don’t mind eating the same thing more than once, and it seemed the family don’t either.

I struggled in with the bags of shopping–I keep a couple of the ‘bags for life’ in the car anyway, and took another two with me today–I filled them to capacity. Then, I bought a sack of Maris peer spuds on the way home from the supermarket–there’s a local farm shop I buy them from. I doubt they actually grow them, but they’re usually good quality and reasonable mixture of small and quite large potatoes, so I can boil them or use the bigger ones for jackets.

I’d planned an hour’s work on the survey this morning, but by the time I got home with the shopping and the spuds, I wasn’t going to have time. So my mood was not good.

Then as I said, I struggled in with these heavy bags and Jacquie is sitting at the kitchen table in tears. I put the bags down and asked her what was wrong. “He shouted at me.”

“Who did?”

“The man.”

“What man?” There’s only about three billion on the planet, so eliminating one or two would make life a little easier in identifying said individual so I can kick his arse.

“The man who shouted at me.”

This was going nicely round in circles. “Start again, Jacquie–who was the man who shouted at you?”

“The man who wanted to read the meter.”

Progress–good, “Okay, did he show you some ID?”

“He had a badge thing on and was in uniform.”

At least he was a genuine reader, “Why did he shout at you?”

“He asked if he could read the meter, I told him he could. He asked me where they were–and I didn’t know,” she burst into tears. I calmed her down a little and she continued, “He didn’t believe me and told me I was stupid–I don’t know where they are, Mummy, no one’s told me, have they?”

“Did he leave a card?”

“I think so,” she pulled out a piece of rather damp cardboard from her pocket. I took it from her and said I’d read the meter and phone it through to them. I made her dry her tears and then taking the card and a pen, I led her through to the garage with my old Jaguar, the meters–gas and electric were in there. This time it was asking me to read both.

I showed her where in the hallway of the house the spare garage key was kept and told her not to worry, she’d know how to do it next time. I phoned the numbers through to the call centre and asked to speak to someone. When I eventually did, I complained that I had my niece staying with us and how off their meter reader had been–it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know where the meters were.

Stella was out and had taken both her wains with her, so Jacquie thought she’d have an easy morning with just Catherine to babysit.

The woman to whom I spoke assured me that someone would speak to the meter reader and if necessary he would be retrained. I thanked them and passed this news on to Jacquie, who thanked me.

“I’m sorry, Mummy, I messed up didn’t I?”

“No–you didn’t know–so it’s my fault for not telling you where they were.”

“You’ve had to show me so many things, you haven’t had time to do it all.”

“Never mind, let’s have a cuppa, you put the kettle on and I’ll finish getting the shopping in.” I went back to my car just in time to see a rather large cat legging it with my salmon. I could have cried. I gave chase but he squeezed through a hole in the fence and up into the woodland beyond.

I stormed back into the house ready to marmalise any moggies I met. “What’s the matter, Mummy?”

“Some wretched cat has just stolen a whole salmon from the boot of the car.”

“Oh no,” Jacquie groaned.

“If I see him again, I’ll shoot the bugger,” I ranted.

“No you wouldn’t, Mummy, you’re far too kind hearted. It’s me you should shoot, because I delayed you. If I hadn’t messed up with the meter man, you’d have got the shopping in earlier and saved your salmon.”

I sat down and after drinking my tea, I phoned Morrison’s–they didn’t have another whole salmon. I tried Asda, they didn’t either but Tesco did. I asked them to weigh it, it was slightly bigger than my pussy purloined one, but I asked them to keep it for me and I’d be in to get it within the hour.

I asked Jacquie to check, Catherine’s nappy and if it was okay, to get herself ready and we’d take a trip into Tesco to get my fish. She rushed off to sort her messed up eye makeup while I strapped the baby in her baby seat–she was excited to be going in the car and didn’t help flapping her arms and legs about. It was clearly going to be one of those days.

Jacquie eventually returned and got into the car and off we went. “This is a lovely car, Mummy.”

“Yes, I quite like it. Simon got it for me when I crashed the Porsche.”

“You crashed a Porsche?”

“Yes, one of the 4x4 things, a Cayenne, a deer jumped out in front of me and I swerved and ended up going down into a ditch. It took them the best part of a day to find me.”

“Oh wow, you don’t do anything by halves, do you, Mummy.”

“You’re starting to understand me, Jacquie.”

Jacquie pushed the buggy with the baby as I stood in the queue at the wet fish counter–what a silly name–they don’t have a dry fish one.

“What a lovely baby,” said some woman behind me, “is she yours?”

“Oh no, she’s my baby sister, that’s Mummy, in front in the queue.” My heart jumped but I had my answer, we could speak about it on the ride back.