The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2529 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad

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We watched the ‘Boy in the dress,’ David Walliams attempt to make cross dressing more acceptable. The girls loved it, I wasn’t so sure, but I suppose anything which increases tolerance has got to be good. It’s also aimed at children so I suppose had a relatively simple storyline of the hero in a dress, the wearing of the dress not making him any less of a man—okay, not exactly my experience of wearing female clothing but who’s to say it isn’t that of others; perhaps someone in Walliams’ acquaintance.

Sadly, Danielle, who is equally if not more talented than the boy in the dress, at football, would be a different story. To all intents and purposes she is now female so can’t easily revert back to being a man or even boy, thanks to her little psycho friend, she’s never going to be able to function as male again. Quite what that does to her life, remains to be seen—I only hope that it doesn’t mess it up too much for her. At the moment she understands that she could play for England schoolgirls and then possibly for England women. It might be a better opportunity than had she stayed as a boy to win an England cap and she understands that.

I’m aware that this is a distraction or compensation for the loss of her manhood, which I doubt she’d have done voluntarily so we might have troubles to face in the future. Otherwise she’s an amazing young woman and since throwing herself into the role—she enjoyed playing at it before—she seems to have blossomed. Being a realist, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but while this era of femininity lasts, I’ll help her enjoy it if I can. I don’t have the worry of her becoming pregnant, but there are still plenty of worries about her, as I have with the other girls.

David said he enjoyed his Christmas; I hope wasn’t just being polite. At least he can surf the net to his heart’s content or look for Hannah on Fb, which was his declared aim. I have some understanding of his reason. Hannah was the closest thing he had to a child of his own. I don’t know if spending part of his life as female made his need to ‘have’ a child to parent, preferably as a father. I know he has been brilliant with mine most of the time, so he certainly has a skill with youngsters. So he builds a relationship with Hannah whose experience of paternal roles was of a bully who beat both her and her mother, so someone like David could show her it’s not the only one. I also hoped that some interaction with Daddy and Simon could also convey that there are positive things about men as well. Simon and I possibly saved her life the day her so called father came with some thuggish friends to teach us all a lesson. I shot two with my bow and arrows (like cock sparrow) and Simon marmalised the other one, knocking him senseless with two bone crunching punches.

That happened near Christmas, two years ago—could it be that long? It must be I recently came across the receipts for the computer I gave Hannah, which I presume she’s still using.

I feel sorry for David and Hannah, less so for Ingrid as her decision upset three lives, though I wasn’t privy to her reasons for going other than she’d found herself a job. David doesn’t say much, it might be as yet too raw for him to deal with at the moment, or being a bloke he might prefer not to talk—least of all to me, a woman, or he might open up. I have no idea. He knows we all support and love him, so we can’t really do anything else except to give him the space he wants or needs or be there if he does want to talk.

Boxing Day started fine and then it positively peed down. I won’t say it rained hard but we had a couple of ducks knock the door seeking shelter. Henry advised me that the project up in Scotland for the nature reserve had been put on hold, awaiting the results of the project in Hampshire. That was behind schedule but was approaching completion of the visitor centre construction. Dan was keeping me up to date on all things there and I knew I could trust him. The university seemed to have stepped back and left it up to us to say when we needed their input and the bank seemed happy with what I passed on to them from Dan’s reports.

I was in my study after breakfast when I happened to glance at the calendar. To my horror, I realised Danni’s weekend training camp was the next day. I called her to the study.

“Wassup, Mummy?”

“What day is it tomorrow?”

“Uh—dunno, somebody’s birthday?”

“No, try again.”

“Um—yesterday was—um—Thursday—so it’s Friday today, Sat-a-dee, yeah thass what it is.”

I sighed, “Right, so what is supposed to happen tomorrow?”

“I dunno, but the week after is that football camp thingy.”

“The last weekend of the year?”

“Yeah, why.”

“Look at the calendar.”

“Oh shi—ugar, what we gonna do, Mummy?”

“Go and get the letter they sent you.”

“I thought you had it.”

“No, it was addressed to you, so I gave it back to you.”

“Well I dunno where it is, do I?”

“As long as you haven’t thrown it out, it has to be here somewhere.”

“You sure you in’t got it?”

“If I did, it would be stuck on the notice board next to the calendar. Go and check your bedroom.” She shot off almost before I finished speaking, and I strolled upstairs behind her. On reaching her bedroom I watched as she completely knotted her knickers in a frenzy of searching which was so adrenalin driven she wouldn’t have been able to find her own bed.

She sat down on the bed amidst a total mess of clothes, books, makeup, papers and magazines—together with chocolate wrappers, empty drinks cans, CDs and used tissues. She had her head in her hands and was close to bursting into tears. She still hadn’t noticed me. I was trying to remember what the envelope and its contents looked like, having only seen them once.

Poking out from under a pile of glossy women’s mags was a semi familiar envelope. I walked across the blitzed bedroom crunching some loose crisps as I did. Reaching under the magazines I drew out the envelope and sure enough it was the missing correspondence. I waved it in front of her.

“Oh, Mummy, you had it all the time—I nearly had heart failure.”

“No, it was under those glossies.”

“Was it, I thought I looked there.”

“Obviously you didn’t. Right, we’ll go downstairs and read through it all again, then you can come back up here and tidy all this mess.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it, young lady, if you don’t clear up this mess you’ll stay here tomorrow and do it instead of going to Wembley or wherever it is.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re not listening, Danielle.”

“C’mon, what have I gotta pack?”

I took a deep breath and descended the stairs. If she survived the next few minutes she’d probably reach old age, but it wasn’t a certainty by any means and she was beginning to really annoy me.