The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2420 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“I’m sorry?” I said feeling as bewildered as I probably looked.

“Sorry, I thought you’d know all the terminology. Full facial surgery, cost me a fortune, brow shaved, jaw line altered, cheeks built up, nose job, lips plumped, tracheal shave and vocal cords shortened.”

“Geez,” I said, feeling I was talking to the bionic woman.

“Then the breast implants, nipple improvement, lipo on the waist, bum enhancement, plus the vaginoplasy and clit job.”

“Is there any of the original left?” I asked perhaps impertinently.

“Oh yeah, few more things to do.”

“Why, you look fine to me.”

“That’s okay for you to say, but you have the advantage of being female, and a very beautiful one.”

“But you look fine, too.”

“Not fine enough,” she drained her mug.

“Without wishing to seem rude, you haven’t got a surgery fetish, have you?”

“Perhaps a trifle, but I want to be perfect.”

“But nobody’s perfect.”

“That isn’t what my students were saying, boys and girls, when we did your dormouse film in media studies.”

I suppose it was fair game, a film by one of the staff being analysed by another department.

“Your beauty, poise, knowledge and presentation skills were perfect. You got ten out of ten each time we looked at anything.”

“That was probably Alan’s editing and continuity.”

“No, we also looked at your Scottish play—considering you’re not listed as a professional actor, it was a great performance. I also heard you talk at the school and showed some out-takes. You are a natural.”

“How did you manage that?”

“My niece is there, my sister asked me to go with her. She thought you were lovely, too.”

Oh geez, the whole family is potty.

“So you’d be brilliant as patron of our group.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Please think it over, see our brochure—it’s very important that we have the right person—and you’d be perfect, a happily married and respected academic, mother of transgender daughter plus other kids, film maker, public speaker and aristocrat’s wife. Plus you’re beautiful, clever and brilliant at communicating.”

“This sounds like more than showing my face at your AGM, I’m simply too busy. I’ve got two little ones under four, d’you realise how much time they need? I’ve got four girls at St Clare’s—I don’t have time.”

“Please think it over...”

“Why? I won’t have any more time then than I have now. It’s very flattering, but seriously, I’m saying no and meaning it. I won’t change my mind tomorrow or the next day. Sorry. Now if that’s it, I have to dash off to a meeting with the dean in...” I looked at my watch, “six minutes.”

She rose from the chair. “Julie said you wouldn’t do it because you were too busy, but I had to try. Thanks for seeing me,” she placed her empty mug on my desk—well, okay, Tom’s desk—and shook hands with me again. Her hand was much bigger than mine and seemed to engulf it up to my wrist. “You really are beautiful in the flesh, even more than on camera.”

“Sure, I haven’t even got any makeup on and I’m hardly dressed for visitors.”

“You don’t need makeup, my dear, you look perfect as you are, and Julie said you were a bike nut.”

I wondered if she was crazy or needed to see a good optician.

She left her publicity brochure behind and I was tempted to drop it in the bin but I didn’t. I glanced at it, I’d send them a donation to buy off my conscience. I’d anticipated she’d know my history, she didn’t or if she did, she’d given it a blind eye. I didn’t want anything to do with an association which could remind people of things I’d prefer they just forgot, like my original status. But I was also too thinly spread now, too busy, too rushed, neglecting my children for someone else’s. I finished what I was doing and went home.

The rest of the day went by consumed by children vying for my attention or David asking questions about the menus for the following few days. At one point I nearly said something but bit my tongue and went to the loo where I sat and managed to detach myself from the situation and realised he was only trying to do his job as well as he could.

It felt as if no one could make a decision without me instructing them, but then when I thought about it, it was easy to see why. I was head of the household in essence despite Tom or Simon seeming to be so on paper. I made the rules in the house so people deferred to me. I was in charge of the woodland study centre, so I made decisions there—Dan had authority to make small ones but I was his boss. The same in my department in the bank and the university, I was in charge up to a certain level, controlling budgets and staff levels, recruitment of students, curriculum, research topics and so on. Above that was Tom as acting dean, but if I have to go to him, except to make reports or progress reports, I’ve failed. Baptism of fire goes nowhere near describing it.

It was expected of me, that I would direct and guide those in my charge or care. I was lady of the manor and thus discharge of those sorts of obligations should have been in my genes or education or culture—except they weren’t. I went to a grammar school not a public school like Si and Stella. I was brought up as a boy—the superior male sex—except I wasn’t one and treated as an inferior one by most other males and some females as well.

Everything in my background seemed to prepare me for middle class dreariness, being in the middle layers of everything, whereas the high fliers from private schools and Oxbridge soared to the stars. I was in a system that was readying me to be a lieutenant not a captain and somehow the universe projected and promoted me beyond that expectancy. When things happened, I took control if there was no one else to do so, sometimes despite there being someone with more expertise, it fell to me to do my own thing, assert myself.

It seemed either the universe was pushing me beyond my comfort zone to see what I could cope with, or I was an example of the Peter Principle, which showed I’d been promoted to the level of my incompetence. I supposed there might be a bit of both involved but it appeared that was where I was. The difference between my form of command and many others was method. I only gave orders when requests didn’t work, and I liked to think I led people not drove them. I certainly seemed to work as hard as any.

As I washed my hands in the cloakroom, I stared at myself in the mirror and instead of feeling burdened by authority or responsibility, I said to myself, “This is how it is, they need you to guide them, to lead them. Stop complaining and do it, because no one else will.” I then went out, dealt with David calmly and had a cuppa with him. Dinner was fine.

Afterwards I managed to grab Julie; “I’d like a word with you, young lady...”