The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2398 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“You used to be a boy, did you?” I threw back at her.

“Yeah, so did you.”

“I think I’d prefer to describe myself as previously a woman or girl with a plumbing anomaly.”

I saw her blush reflected in the rear view mirror, “Um, what’s a nomally, Mummy.”

It was tempting to say, ‘You are,’ but I didn’t, instead I answered her with an explanation of the word. “An anomaly, is something which is out of place or unexpected.”

“So us winning the quiz is an anomaly?”

“Insofar as St Winnifred’s usually wins it, yes.”

“’Cos of us,” she poked her sister who nodded.

“I think as much as anything, the run of the questions was as big a factor as anything else.”

“So we didn’t win it?” she scowled at me via the mirror.

“I didn’t say that, but with all these things there is an element of luck which came just in time for you two to have questions you could answer and you were quick on the buzzer. The fact that you answered them correctly was very important so you did really well and I’m very proud of you.”

She beamed back at me. It appears I can still game play better than her if not as ruthlessly.

I turned into the drive and we had an audience before we managed to squeeze into the house. I left the two quizzers to deal with the enquiries while I sat for a cuppa and sent Si a text. He sent one back saying he was sorry he missed it but he was proud of them. I told both girls when they returned to earth. David had made us a lovely dinner of grilled wild salmon with new potatoes, whole green beans and baby carrots. I could barely wait to tuck into it—I love fish, and salmon is one of my favourites.

I’d mentioned the scrambled egg and smoked salmon we’d had at Southwell and he said he’d do it for lunch one day, he seemed familiar with it, but then he is a professional chef, I’m not even a gifted amateur.

The two geniuses in training crashed from their cloud cuckoo land just before bedtime, so they went off to bed with no trouble. I suppose they just ran out of steam, it had been quite a tiring day for them and they had performed really well. I gave in to tiredness an hour or so later and was up and asleep long before Si came up.

The next day it was business as usual and I took our two superstars together with the lesser mortals who attend the same school. When they walked into the school playground a cheer went up and I suspect Danni and Mima felt as embarrassed as I did. It appeared we had two celebrities in the family. I left them to the tender mercies of the duty teacher and escaped back home for a fresh cuppa and something to eat as I’d not had time before.

Once I’d finished my late breakfast, I decamped to my study with more tea and in ten minutes found the article about the quiz in a local paper.

‘Portsmouth Girls Win Schools’ Quiz.

Turns out they’re gifted children of clever parents, mum is film maker and university lecturer Dr Cathy Watts and dad is a director with High St Banks, and granddad is a professor of biological sciences at Portsmouth University. Seems like a pretty good pedigree, no wonder they took the trophy away from St Winfred’s for the first time in six years. Well done, St Clare’s, let’s see what happens next year, as they have two other sisters at the school as well.’

It showed a photo of the team holding the trophy. I printed off a copy and emailed the paper to order a proper one. I placed the copy on the kitchen table and Stella, Jacquie and David commented on it, especially the pedigree bit—‘no wonder they won.’ That threw me for a moment, they all know the kids are adopted because they all know I’m not capable of breeding, but they overlook it or conveniently forget it. I didn’t say anything just shrugged.

Of course when they got home they wanted a copy to put in their scrapbooks—mostly the entries are about Simon or me, occasionally Tom or Henry or even Danni and her football prowess. It was therefore rather nice for them to have something about themselves, so I printed off two further copies and left them to include them in their scrap books. These aren’t ones with cheap cardboard pages but loose leaf binders with things in punched pockets—the clear wallet things you simply slide paper into.

They changed and did the little homework they had to and then Danni went off on a training run as she starts to get back to fighting fit for her football season. I’d liked to have gone with her but I was feeding Lizzie, so much to my astonishment Jacquie offered to go with her if she promised not to run too fast. I saw them trotting down the drive as I went back to the kitchen for another cuppa, then my own project, once I detached the boob sucker, my mammal survey.

Dormouse numbers seemed down which was a little worrying—three cold winters and then a mild but very wet one. Remembering that the poor little critters hibernate in the ground, they could easily have drowned or become victims of some fungal disease or perhaps just emerged too early before there was any food available.

The Mammal Society had just run a dormouse course at Cheddar, that’s a bit west of here, where they have been monitoring populations for many years. They failed to find any to show the students on the course which was rather unfortunate—they did have a wood mouse however, and it bit someone drawing blood.

Whilst I pondered the fate of dormice, pleased that we looked to have quite a few babies this year to release, the dinner gong sounded and I went to eat my share of bangers and mash with onion gravy—yummee—and proves we don’t eat luxuriously every day. Okay, so the sausages are hand made by a butcher in town who breeds his own pigs, and yes they were expensive but delicious. It’s one of Simon’s favourites and David had put two dinners aside for Si and Sammi, which I was tempted to say Julie and Pheebs had eaten, not that he’d have believed me.

He took a large mouthful of sausage and mash and grinning said, “Even better than school.” A real compliment given how much he enjoyed some school meals.