The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2317 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I let go the fantasy of a bit of troilism with Messrs Tennant and Firth and went back to my ironing. I had to do some because I felt pressed. Okay my laundry jokes are a bit wet. Well Bramble thought they were funny, she had to lick her bum to stop herself laughing out loud—that’s what she told me. Didn’t I tell you, I’m really Dr Doolittle? “If I could talk to the animals...”

“If you’re thinking of auditioning for the Voice, don’t.” That was Danielle’s advice as she went to the loo.

“Charming.”

“I am, totally,” she threw back at me as she went into the cloakroom.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” I threw back at her but i suspect she missed it as she shut the door. She looked much better and I hoped the pneumonia would clear up fairly quickly given she was young and fairly fit.

“Are you goin’ to watch this bike race thing in Yorkshire, Auntie Cathy?”

“Eh?” I don’t know if I was more astonished at the question or the form of address, given she usually called me Dr Watts.

“I don’t think I’m going to have time, Cindy, much as I’d love to see Mark Cavendish take the yellow jersey.”

“What colour does he usually have then?”

Danni seemed to be taking quite a long time in the loo. “Just a second,” I went to the cloakroom. “Are you all right in there?” I called through the door.

“Yeah, I’m having a poo.”

“Okay,” too much information. I went back to Cindy and explained about how the leader of the race wears the maillot jeune and that the best chance Cav would have to do that would be on the first stage as it was considered to be likely to end in a bunch sprint and provided his team, Omega-Pharma-Quickstep, get their act together and lead him out, he was a reasonable bet. He likes to perform in front of a home crowd and always pulls all the stops out.

“So how fast does he go, then?”

“Depends upon all sorts of things but a short sprint finish can reach speeds of forty miles an hour.”

“Won’t they be breaking the speed limit, in a town centre?”

“I sincerely hope so.” I smiled wishing I had time to go and see it.

I finished my ironing and went to the study to check my emails. I had one from Mark Eustice at York Uni. Given I’d been talking about Yorkshire not that long before, I opened it with my heart beating a little more quickly.

‘Hi Cathy,
A few rodent records for you. Are you coming up for Le Tour, Yorkshire is going mad and it’s still three months away. If you are, I can get you preferential rates at my sister’s B&B, but I’ll need to know in the next few days.
Kind regards,
Mark.’

I must have talked to him about bikes while I was up there or was my fame as the cycling dormouse woman spreading up towards Hadrian’s Wall?

I wondered how many she could accommodate? His sister, that is. I’d need to take Danni, Trish, Meems, Cate and Livvie as well as Lizzie and Simon. That’s pretty well a houseful, it was probably too many. However, I sent him a reply asking how many rooms she had available, we’d need at least two, possibly three. I felt that would probably put the kibosh on it, but I sent it anyway. I can dream, can’t I?

I was looking through his records, which are some of the best organised ones I receive when my ’puter peeped indicating a new email.

‘She’s got two with three beds in each, but she can’t keep them clear for long. She’s prepared to do both rooms for a hundred a night.’

That seemed extremely good value to me, even three hundred would be reasonable for the two rooms. I asked him to provisionally book them while I rubbed myself around Simon’s legs, purring. I booked for the three nights, the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we travel up on the Friday and back on the Monday. It would mean I’d miss much of the Monday stage from Cambridge to London, but seeing two stages, especially if we could get to the finish of stage one and watch the sprint—it would be total magic. We saw him win on the Champs-Élysées, it was totally brilliant. I closed my mouth after realising I was almost drooling.

I sent a text to Simon telling him I’d book us a B&B for the Yorkshire stages of le Tour. He sent me one back asking what had taken so long and were we putting the girls into a cattery. I replied no, a nunnery. His response was a laughing face and the three letters, LOL.

“Get thee to a nunnery,” I said out loud as Stella was coming past.

“I beg your pardon?”

I blushed, “Sorry, I was thinking out loud.”

“Thinking what?” she gave me a very queer look—hardly surprising given what I’d said.

“Bits of Hamlet.”

“I won’t go there, except to say, I thought I was strange...”

“Until you discovered Smirnoff,” I completed.

“No, I was going to say, until I met you.”

“Gee thanks, Stella. Just don’t forget you taught me all I know.”

She winced, “Don’t remind me—oh, the crazy bit I reckon came from drinking all that dormouse poo in your tea.”

“What?” even to someone as crazy as me, that didn’t make sense. Dormouse poo in my tea? Then the penny dropped, Through the Looking Glass or whatever, and dormouse in the teapot.

“Don’t tell me you missed my literary allusion?”

“I suppose it’s about as literary as you get, Stella.”

“Oh, Cathy, you cut me to the quick—all that money Dad must have wasted on my lack of education.”

“You got to ride a horse and...” I was going to say, ‘shag Des.’ I was so glad I didn’t.

‘And what, Missus?”

“And escape the mundane realities of us plebs.”

“You’re no longer a pleb,” she said firmly.

“Ah, but I was then.”

“You’re going to say you were a boy then too, weren’t you?”

I was already in over my head so I just agreed with her, more evidence of the old adage, when in a pit stop digging or it’s better to stay silent and be thought a fool than open your cakehole and prove it beyond any reasonable doubt.

“You were never a boy, Cathy, just a girl with a bad haircut and a plumbing problem.”

I hugged her and we both chuckled.

“Simon is taking me and the younger girls to see the Tour de France.”

“Got your passports ready?”

“For Yorkshire?”

“I thought you said the Tour de France not tour of bloody Yorkshire.”

“I did, it’s starting in Yorkshire.”

“Why do they call it the Tour de bleeding France”, then?

“Because that’s what it is?”

“How can it be if starts in ‘trouble at mill’ country?”

“Are you a Lancastrian, per chance.”

“A bike, a bike, my kingdom for a bike,” she retorted walking round like Quasimodo with a rupture.

“Shouldn’t that have been, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent...?”

“Oh bugger off, you and your Shakespeare, show off.” She loped out of the room still in Quasimodo mode. All I could do was laugh, my sister in law is stark staring bonkers.