The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2352 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

The weekend came and went with the fine weather we spent much of the time outdoors, the girls in bikinis or shorts and crop tops and me covered up with tons of high factor sun blocker. “Why don’t you put your bikini on as well, babes.”

“Darling, I’m too old to be strutting my stuff in a swim suit, especially when there’s no water nearby. I’d just look silly.”

“What? You look brilliant in a bikini.”

“Too bad.” I said going back indoors to help David with the lunch. Tom did find and assemble the paddling pool but there was a large tear in it. Si helped him take it down again.

“Why can’t we have a proper swimming pool, Daddy?” asked Trish.

“Because they cost too much to run and your mother would be angry at the amount of water they need to fill them, the chemicals they need to keep them clean and all the other incidentals like having it built.”

“But you’ve got plenty of money?” she fired back.

“I wouldn’t if I listened to you, young lady.”

She made some sort of dismissive noise and went off up the garden.

“I agree with your reply wholeheartedly,” I said handing him a cup of tea.

“Good,” was his reply and he sipped his tea while I went inside to drink mine.

The Sunday was actually the warmest day, living up to its epithet. The girls were once again in very skimpy clothing and rubbing sun blocker into each other. Even Daddy was in shorts, giving us a wonderful view of his varicose veins. I had on a sun dress.

Simon and Daddy had decided to do a barbecue for lunch, David having got the stuff for them in the week. This wasn’t burgers and sausage but steak and onions with wholemeal baps and a salad I’d made up while they were lighting the barbecue.

I’d been tempted to part cook all the meat but Si refused, telling me he knew all about barbecues and making sure the food was properly cooked. This was news to me and I decided I’d have a cheese and salad roll instead.

The rest of them told me I didn’t know what I was missing and they tucked into their steaks with gay abandon. It was too hot to do any chores, so I did some survey stuff and then looked at the script I’d written for the harvest mouse. He’d managed to do some filming and all I needed to do was some voice-overs and some shooting of me in similar looking fields plus some of actual fields where the harvest mice were, showing a disused nest and so on. These things are so small they make dormice look huge and they’re not very big.

I was so busy with my script trying to visualise the sort of backdrop it needed or if I could just do a narration when Meems came in grumbling about a funny tummy. A short while later she was sick, followed an hour later by Trish, then Cate, then Stella’s two, Danni, Phoebe and Daddy. Simon and Julie somehow were unaffected as was Stella—who hadn’t had a burger just a salad roll.

The probable diagnosis was food poisoning through incomplete cooking. Simon insisted that if were true, how come he wasn’t affected? I had no idea, there were obvious reasons, perhaps some meat had been infected and not other packs.

As David had got the meat for us, Simon went over to his cottage to read the riot act, except David wasn’t there, he’d taken Ingrid and Hannah off for the day. I got advice on looking after my patients and providing they didn’t dehydrate, they’d be okay in a day or two. My main fears were the youngsters but they pulled out of it quicker than the older children.

When David came back he sent the packets the meat had been sent in to the public health lab and asked them to see what had happened. We suspected salmonella but would have been wrong, campylobacter was the culprit and we had a couple of very messy and uncomfortable days. At one point I sent Si into an ironmongers to get some more plastic buckets—it was that bad.

Of course they were too sick to go to school who didn’t want them there just in case they were still infectious. Only their humour was.

I had to take time off work to look after them, Stella was advised she might carry bugs so was told to stay home as well. Jacquie missed all the fun. She’d been at Southampton doing some bits for her course. Was she glad and was I pleased to have her back, Stella was still next to useless. I tried to point out that looking after sick people was a nurse’s job and she nearly bit my head off.

“I’m a clinical specialist nurse, don’t do basic care.”

I felt like telling her that I was a doctor but of ecology, not medicine and I needed her help. If she didn’t know how to do the basics, I was sure I could find someone to show her. That finally worked and in three days all of them were better and able to start light diets.

The weather broke on the Monday night with flashes and bangs as a celestial firework display entertained us for an hour. It certainly became cooler and I was quite glad to return to a few more clothes, donning jeans and a thicker top.

Pippa called once or twice and I had to go and collect papers for Tom to sign. He took the longest to recover but then he is the eldest by some margin. Pippa then called to say the network went down—the whole university, that is, before she called to say it was thought to have been caused by a Russian or Chinese attack. It seems they want different things, the Russians want to cause chaos and the Chinese want secrets.

I can remember my father grumbling that various governments were giving all our technology away or selling it. And it was interesting to see the US giant Pfizer’s attempt to buy AstraZeneca was declined by the board of the UK-Swedish company despite amounts being mentioned that to me sounded more like the numbers astronomers talk about. It was all about the US company trying to dodge some taxes by relocating to the UK, but concerns about the takeover involving loss of research funding and drug development meant politicians and doctors seemed against it.

The downside was that seven billion pounds were wiped off the share price once the bid was rejected. That’s almost as much as Simon earns a week—only joking.

I think I was relieved it didn’t happen, the takeover, I mean. The UK has already lost some of its expertise in the research and development in new drugs, so it was important to protect this company. I assume Pfizer will have to pay its taxes or find another company to attack. I’ll stick to dormice I think.