The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2479 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

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“How long did it take Sammi to find your mistake?” asked Simon.
I was sure he could see me blushing, even in the dark and my face felt so warm. What was so embarrassing was having helped Sussex find that problem with the dot in the wrong place, I went and did the self same thing. It took Sammi two minutes to spot my mistake and even less to log into the university. “Mummy, the security on this is pathetic, good job you’re not a bank. The firewall isn’t even turned on.”

“Perhaps if I undid another button on my top...”

“What?”

“It would turn the firewall o...never mind.”

“You’re completely barking,” she looked at me and shook her head.

“Yeah, caught it from the dogfish I dissected in school.”

She shook her head. “Dogfish, what’s that got to do with bark...oh, very funny.”

“You were slow there, kiddo.”

“Yeah, it’s living with old fogies that does it.”

“Ha,” I said and returned to tormenting my laptop. She went off to fiddle on her own computer, she works on them all day and plays games all night. Still, I had a bit more energy at her age. That makes me sound really old, perhaps I am? I really wanted to cycle but the surgeon had told me to wait, I had another two weeks to go.

I also know that it would take about the same time to heal enough for intimacies with Simon and while that was important to the relationship, it wasn’t as big a priority as I thought. That surprised me a little, though—dunno why.

I blushed again but Simon was asleep. Sometimes he’s able to read me like a book, other times, he can’t even seem to read my body language when I’m deliberately posturing for him. When I’m doing it so he can guess correctly at its meaning and tell me so I can then suggest he’s a genius. Old tricks, yeah but reliable ones and if he does guess, he keeps it to himself.

The vaginal repair was throbbing gently. I’d rinsed it out with saline earlier and that reminded it of the wound. I turned over onto my back which took the pressure off my groin—the weight of my leg pressing on it, and my bladder—eased the discomfort and I eventually drifted off to sleep only to wake an hour or so later hearing a funny noise. I listened but heard nothing, however, my bladder decided it wanted evacuating so I had to leave my nice warm bed and trot to the loo.

I’d just finished and was tearing off a piece of loo roll when I heard it again. I wiped, pulled the flush and washed my hands then slipped out onto the landing to listen. Tom’s ‘auld grandfaither’ clock chuntered away downstairs with a reassuringly loud tick and I was about to go back to bed assuming I’d heard the wind whistling or some other perfectly normal sound when the noise happened again—a whimper.

It seemed to come from the girls’ room, where Trish, Livvie, Meems and Cate sleep. I quietly walked to the doorway and stood listening, Livvie seemed to be a little restless but otherwise they were all fast asleep.

As I listened I thought about the sadness in the ‘diary’ of a woman working with MSF out in West Africa helping to treat the ebola outbreak. They’ve been broadcasting it on Radio 4 and it was heart rending today, when a little boy of seven died and due to the contagious element of the disease, his mother couldn’t comfort him nor herself by holding his body, which was bagged up for incineration. Then a little later on it was reported that the mother was caring for a child who’d lost his own mother, showing her compassion despite her own loss. To say it was moving would be a massive understatement conveying the horror and sadness—such as one of her patients seemed to be lost and was found collapsed in the showers, hiccupping—a very bad sign apparently.

Here in the west we know of the epidemic and hope it doesn’t come our way, but it’s so far away and we tend to forget how people who have little or nothing are being devastated by it, with communities afraid to move in case they catch it, or frightened that someone in their family might have it and be removed to hospital by the foreigners in the bio-protection suits. They can’t grieve in their usual way or even bury their dead. If it’s ebola, the body is burned in a body bag and if they family are lucky, they get a photo of the victim’s face before the bag is sealed.

To anyone this far away it seems obvious, seal up the body, spray bleach solution everywhere, test the body to make sure it was ebola—then burn it. To be someone who is tasked with doing that or the family of a victim, is a very different story and I’d hate to be there, in such suffering and danger; but I was glad someone was brave enough to help. I’d send them some more money in the morning.

Just as I was about to return to my now inviting bed, the clock struck one o’clock and Livvie whimpered again. I went to her and spoke quietly to her. “It’s okay, sweetheart, Mummy’s here, just relax and sleep, you’re perfectly safe.”

She sighed, “Mummy,” and turned towards me, her eyes flickered open but she didn’t see me. However, she seemed to snuggle down and sleep more deeply. I waited a few minutes but she’d gone off properly and I went back to my own bed.

“Where’ve you been?” Simon asked sleepily.

“Checking on the girls, Livvie was a bit restless.”

“Oh okay,” and he zonked straight back to sleep. I cuddled in beside him and got warm finally falling asleep myself about twenty minutes later as the clock chimed the half hour. When I first went there, Tom had to switch the chime to silent at night, then it apparently started to chime and didn’t worry me on the second night.

I’d been used to chiming clocks at home but my family home was much smaller than Tom’s house and so was the Westminster chiming clock—sounds like Big Ben, which is what the clock on the Houses of Parliament is usually called, though Big Ben is actually the bell, purportedly named after Sir Benjamin Hall, though there are other legends as well. The bell is the one which chimes the hours and is iconic of the British establishment and London in particular. It’s apparently one of the largest striking clocks in the world. Given it’s over a hundred and fifty years old, that we still have something bigger or better than the rest of the world tends to surprise us. I’d certainly miss it were it to disappear as would millions in this country and perhaps the rest of the world.