The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 2025 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

We were lying together in the afterglow–well until something started oozing–right, too much information. I wanted Simon’s suggestion on how we could protect Mabel, who appeared to be our only witness. Sadly, by the time I got back from the bathroom Simon was lying on his back, mouth open doing his impression of a black hole. I put my cold hands on him, but he was too far gone to feel that–so there was only one thing I could do. You don’t want to know what, but it involved his dirty socks which were still reclining on the bedroom floor despite him promising to put them in the laundry hamper. He didn’t notice for probably two hours when he sat up and started coughing and spluttering–I was fast asleep, natch.

It was difficult to stay asleep the noise he was making scrubbing his teeth and gargling with mouth wash but I managed to keep up the pretence while he got back into bed. It was when he slapped my bum and I squealed he knew the culprit, so he slapped me again and I lay there giggling. Two hours sucking his dirty sock–hee hee.

“Bitch,” he said, then turned over and a short time later he was fast asleep again whereas I lost about half an hour–couldn’t stop giggling. “It’s not funny,” was his parting shot before he went off to dreamland again. I thought to the contrary, it was hilarious–it could do two things: make him put his dirty clothes in the proper receptacle; and possibly keep his mouth shut when he sleeps.

The next morning he was gone before I woke up, how he manages on so little sleep baffles me, but then his constitution is possibly the eighth wonder of the universe. He can be legless one night and still gets up for work the next day without a hangover. As far as I know he doesn’t drink so much these days but I do wonder about business lunches and he is showing a bit of middle aged spread.

I’ve been watching what I eat and drink–not that I have much alcohol–but I do like the odd fruit juice and loads of tea. There is of course the odd thing like chocolate, but it’s a well established fact that chocolate and ice cream contain no calories, so you can eat as much as you like–just don’t swallow.

It was a rush to get the girls to school, but I managed it, just and received their scorn for them being last into the building. It was building up to be one of those days. I arrived at the university to be told by Pippa that I had a committee meeting this evening and Jeff, one of our junior lecturers had gone sick–could I do a session on taxonomy–my answer? It’s classified–taxonomy? Forget it.

I suppose with the advances in DNA analysis it’s easier to know if species are related, but seeing as we share about forty per cent of ours with a banana or something, when you really start to analyse it, it becomes very different though shared sequences will occur–probably most living things share some sequences–after all, we all arose from similar ancestors in the primordial slime. Yeah–it has a lot to answer for.

Two hours is a long time to amuse the better part of a hundred sub-adults and I usually try to play games with them–as in my own classes. I got Neal to collect some sequences of different species and stick them on a slide and we had a bit of a quiz. That took up about twenty minutes, especially as the sequences were quite similar. We gave them a list of the species they came from and they had to guess which was which.

Then of course I went on to evolution, and would you believe it, we had a couple of creationists in the class. The world is no more than six thousand years old, that sort of stuff. Okay so they accept Archbishop Usher was wrong–but not his basic principle–how can you deal with this sort of fundies?

We argued about natural selection and about carbon dating–they accept neither. I tried to get them to understand that generally when things are found in deeper rocks it’s commonly accepted that they are older than the rocks on top, except where folding occurs–which is sometimes obvious–they have some wonderful stratification at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, where rocks have been folded. They also have a petrified forest of the remains of giant fern trees.

The rest of the class seemed to side with me but those two held their ground, not being intimidated by force of numbers or by slide after slide of evidence we have to show the dinosaurs happened millions of years before humans, and that humans had ancestors in the hominids of up to three million years ago–modern humans appearing somewhere about forty thousand years ago, which is seven times longer than our two dissenters agreed.

I wondered if Jeff had gone sick with stress from teaching these two, because I actually asked them outright, “Why are you doing a biology degree when you don’t believe half the information we give you?”

They apparently wanted to see the evidence for themselves so it enabled them to refute it. I asked them for their evidence and they waved a Bible at me. ‘All the evidence I’d ever need.’ I was still bouncing off the ceiling when I went to lunch with Tom.

“What’s this committee meeting I have to attend?”

“The university scientific standards committee.”

“What?”

“It makes sure we’re all above board and not tormenting too many of your tree rats.”

“Like an ethical committee?”

“More encompassing than that–Pippa has the back numbers of minutes–better read some this afternoon instead of sleeping in that office of yours.”

“Sleeping! I saved your bacon this morning by teaching Jeff Small’s class.”

“Oh aye, whit wis that aboot?”

“Taxonomy and evolution.”

“Aye–nae problems?”

“Only two fundies who believe in Adam and Eve.”

“Oh aye,” he said but his eyes twinkled.

“You knew that didn’t you?”

“Meee?” he said, then burst out laughing.

“Bastard,” I hissed at him though it lost its sting when all he did was laugh.

“Ye were getin’ tae complacent, wi’ ye ecology superstardom–ye needed some testing.”

“I see, and did I pass?”

“Oh aye.”

“I’ve a good mind to leave you to walk back this afternoon.” We arrived in my car.

“Oh aye? An wit wull ye tell thae dean aboot ma absence?”

“Bugger.”

“Cathy, ye’re an inspirational teacher but we all need tae be kept on wir mettle. Ye’re still awfy guid.”

“You set me up, didn’t you?”

“Yes an’ no, Jeff went sick and ye we’re most available.”

So it was after lunch when my addled brain thought of Mabel again and how to try and protect her. I sent an email to Kit, who said he’d had someone interview her and take a statement. He was also seeing if they could transfer to a nursing home for convalescence–the bank apparently has shares in one–why doesn’t that surprise me?

He’d also received an email from Stella, and his team were amassing data about our least favourite ward sister. Seems there no shortage of volunteers, though we could only use things we could verify and that would take some time. If she went to court, we’d have to ask for a postponement which shouldn’t be a problem. If only ten per cent were true, she was in deep doo-doo.

At least someone was on the top of their game even if I wasn’t.