The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1729 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

Despite my best efforts, Stella loaded up her car with as much as she could shove in the boot, put both her children in their car seats and drove off without so much as a goodbye. Tom was quite upset by it all and went off to his office in the university; I suspect to avoid him saying something unpleasant to me. I might be the chosen one, but he has a soft spot for Stella as well. Then again he wouldn’t tell her off for making a mistake like he does me–I like to think this is because he tells me like it is, but is polite towards Stella because he doesn’t feel as close to her.

Simon, to my disgust helped her load the car–but at least he was consistent, unlike me. I had started it all by speaking my mind, then regretted it. I hope she’ll be alright. As soon as she left I called Gareth and told him I had tried to apologise but she wouldn’t let me. I also told him to let me know if she showed any signs of her illness returning, and that they were all welcome to come back if they so wished. He thanked me but told me that they were a family unit and would be able to solve their own problems.

Okay, that was telling me–I just hope he forgets all this when we start work together on Monday–it’s my project, and it will remain that way as long as I have a breath in my body.

I spent the rest of the day racked with guilt and irritated by everyone and everything. In the end, I grabbed Catherine, Mima, Trish and Livvie, packed us a bag each and set off for Bristol. When we got there, it started raining and did so for much of Sunday as well.

We returned on Sunday late afternoon, having achieved nothing but using up a tank of diesel, oh and doing some cleaning. For the kids this proved a novelty, but for me, it was just a way of taking my mind off the problems which beset it.

Sunday night I slept very badly. Simon was cross with me for taking off and leaving him to look after Julie, Jacquie and Sammi whom he had to take out for lunch on Sunday with Tom. I’d taken our lot out to a burger shop and they thought it was such a treat.

I practically cried myself to sleep after Simon berated me. I did fire one back at him saying he’d at least had the decency to help Stella pack her car, I had to do my own. He went off on one again and I burst into tears. “Are you sure you’re not on, because you sound just like it?”

“Very funny–not.” I tried to explain that my pills sometimes seemed to cause cycles of a monthly type but I was not ovulating because I had no ovaries nor womb to slough the lining off.

He turned over in a huff and I ended up sleeping with Mima in her bed. The weather had turned wet and cold with brisk northerly winds at times which felt more like November than June. If this was climate change due to man’s activities the sooner some epidemic wiped us all out the better.

On Monday morning I felt tired and fragile, though I managed to get the girls to school and into work on time. Of course, Gareth was there already as was Tom, who was still seeming a bit distant to me.

Thankfully, I discovered I was due to invigilate at an exam most of the morning, but not with one of my classes. Gareth did the same in the afternoon, so the university kept us apart for the first day. I did manage to do some tutorials in the afternoon but wasn’t impressed by the standard of work I was expected to mark–these kids had no idea of scientific protocols for writing up experiments or fieldwork. It looked like my next tutorial session was designated.

Some of the first years did get to see dormice as they were selected to help with the dormouse project. I collated some figures and saw we needed to survey the sector I had to cover through the loss of my post grad researcher. I almost offered it to Gareth, then thought better of it. Instead I arranged for a group of volunteers to accompany me to the site on the Friday morning and we’d do it then. I also spoke to Danny’s headmaster and unbeknownst to Danny, arranged for him to assist us as well–at least he has some idea of what we’re doing.

His headmaster agreed on the understanding that I would ensure that Danny wrote up what we did as a course work project for his science class. I would ensure he did.

Tuesday, was when I realised Wiggo had won the Criterium du Dauphine and that made my spirits lift a little–the Gareth came in looking like he hadn’t slept all night. Apparently, Stella and the two kids went down with some tummy bug–her cooking?–and he’d been up half the night changing them and clearing up the mess.

I did some teaching on ecology, and cut short my lecture, giving out a handout for them to read, then ran through the basics of writing up a fieldwork report and a science essay. It seemed half of them had never been shown how to list references, so how they teach A-levels these days is mind boggling.

In the afternoon, I took a couple of students with me to my survey patch and tried to show them how we do the surveys. I don’t know if they were a particularly stupid lot or whether I was just very irritable, but when they let the third dormouse escape before we weighed or tagged it, I got a bit emotional and bawled them out.

I ended up with three students in tears, and two of those were boys. Then we stopped, had a flask of tea and started again, this time they were much better and we actually managed to gather some data. They also decided they would try again on Friday. Then it rained–not just rained, it absolutely hammered down, complete with bang flash wallop and hailstones. We were soaked and one of the girls slipped in the morass the path became and twisted her ankle. I dumped her at casualty while I went and collected my girls, then collected my student who had nothing worse than a light sprain–but in this day and age, and the American habit of litigation now epidemic in the UK as well–I had to appear to be doing all I could on behalf of the uni to look after her.

We ran her home, and discovered her cat had a litter of kittens–of course the girls had to see them–and of course, they wanted at least one. Fortunately, they were too young to be separated from their mother, but Melanie, the student, pencilled in a small black female one, for my girls. Just what I need, a bloody kitten.