The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2375 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

It was now in the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service—what happened to Ms Vallance, Emma, Pinky and Perky. What I wanted to happen was now irrelevant except that Jason suggested because minors were involved, we could ask the judge for anonymity if it went to trial. I can’t say I was happy either way, all I wanted was for the stupid woman to leave me and mine in peace.

It really annoys me that it appears to always be open season on minority groups as regards tabloid reporting. What greatly impressed me was that so far, none of the students who’d been present at my revision session had spoken to the press.

Some had spoken to me or the other staff and said how appalled they’d been with what obviously been a set up to embarrass me in front of a room full of students. Some of them seemed to understand that fostering or adopting children who were gender variant wasn’t something that would appeal to most foster parents and my taking them on seemed a good idea seeing as I knew the process.

I was also impressed by the solidarity of the staff, even Hilary the other lab tech was supportive, although I think we resolved our differences some while ago. She helps with some teaching of basics for which they pay her a junior lecturer rate, as she is supervised by a more senior teacher. I keep telling her to get her masters and then she can teach—she says she hasn’t got time. What’s that saying about taking a horse to water?

As I said earlier, it seems that people who swop gender are always targets for the tabloid press. I don’t understand why, because we’re no threat to others and certainly not to anyone’s children; but you can see what the tabloids would have done with my story had they been able to run with it. Five male to female, plus me plus David going the opposite way, so seven sex-swoppers in one household, the locals would have been unaffected, but the tabloids would still have stirred up a riot. It’s what they do, they sell prejudice not news which is designed to meet the needs of their readers in being able to look down their noses at the weirdos in the stories—stories being an accurate term, quite a few of them are poorly researched tirades against minority groups. If sex occurs in the name of the minority, so much the better to boost the superiority of the readers who are probably more holy than the pope.

I suspect those of us who don’t read the red tops feel just as prejudiced against them because we’re all left wing Guardian or Independent readers, possibly a few Torygraph and Times readers too. We know we’re superior because our readers understand words like mendacious or supernumerary.

Jim had given a statement to the police about his video of the two suspects going to the salon where one was transformed into a woman. Jim had taken statements from the staff there, so the story that I’d told him to go and wear women’s clothes was total bilge. My original interview had been recorded and not yet messed with so the police were able to show he’d lied about several things in making false accusations against us. I think this is what the Bible describes as bearing false witness.

An internal enquiry concluded that Emma, late of this department, had got the job purely to spy on me and when the time was right, she would betray me and help supply information about me, my movements, any gossip that reported badly of me. In short, anything they could use they would collect in the hope of besmirching my name or reputation or those dear to me. Thankfully it failed.

All of that was for the future, for now I had to deal with embarrassed or anxious children or young adults. Danni had been most affected, but then she’d been the one who’d been humiliated by Vallance’s heavy handed bigotry and the staff of the children’s home when they’d accused her of being a boy and found out the hard way she wasn’t. They’d been sacked and the procedure changed to protect gender variant children. Danni, quite rightly, felt pleased that she’d helped to bring that about.

So far no one has noticed that the girl who scored six goals in two games plays like a boy. I did but then I’m no soccer fan and I could be accused of insider knowledge. So far she hasn’t done the overhead scissors kick, her old trademark move, but she doesn’t preclude it.

I’ve been watching her over the weeks, she’s never happier than when playing football or occasionally watching it. She’s in seventh heaven now the world cup has started, for some of us it’s like paint drying, but then the TdF isn’t far away and we’ll have some real sport on the box, not this soccer rubbish.

Simon was miffed the All Blacks beat England again, this time by just one point, which is all that’s needed for the win. I saw later the same day that the ’Boks had beaten Wales. Together with Andy Murray’s premature departure from Queen’s, the only good news was Chris Froome held onto the lead in the Critérium du Dauphiné from Contador. Apparently, Froome came off through hitting a pothole and had to swap bikes, Contador and co in the peloton slowed things down to enable Froome to make up some of his lost time, for which he was very grateful. Wiggo did a similar thing in le Tour on hearing that Cadel Evans had punctured through someone throwing tacks on the road, enabling those affected to make up the lost time.

So much of cycling is head stuff, psyching opponents and so on, yet there appears to be a small amount of gentlemanly conduct as well. I couldn’t see it happening in F1, so it makes me feel proud of my sport.