The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2649 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

---

This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
@@@@@
“Did you ask Delia?” Danni wanted to know as we walked to the car.

“Ask her what?” I replied almost day dreaming.

“If she wanted to study with you.”

“Yes, she’s going to talk it over with her family.”

“I hope she does, she’s nice.”

“Yes dear.”

“Can Cindy come over tonight?”

“For dinner?”

“No, she’s doing her homework first then coming. I thought I’d like to do some sewing.”

What? “You’d like to do some sewing?”

“Yeah, I need to practice for next year.” Was this my daughter talking?

“Only ’cos you bet Geraldine O’Connor you’d make a better dress next year than she did.” Trish was stirring again. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, Trish may well come back as a wooden spoon.

Danni blushed which was made worse by Livvie adding to her embarrassment, “Yeah, you didn’t know she got the prize for dressmaking last year, did you?”

“Well somebody coulda told me.”

“Why? You were saying you found sewing easy, shoulda stuck to soccer, you are better than her at that.”

It will come as no surprise that we had a sewing bee after dinner. I’d brought a box of patterns from my parent’s house, she decided she’d make a skirt. I had enough spare material to do it so I reminded her how to trim up the pattern then to pin it to the fabric and then cut it out. She chose one with pockets and a zip, plus a waistband and a frilly hem. I felt like asking if someone had kidnapped my daughter and substituted this one for her.

Trish, Livvie and Meems were cutting out patterns for my mutant dormouse. They each wanted a go at making one even though they already had one each that I made for them. Julie came and sat with us for an hour as she repaired overalls for her salon, while I helped Danielle cut out her material, she helped Cindy tack a garment together. Then Phoebe arrived with some trousers to alter and I ended up shortening them for her and hemming them while she made cups of tea and checked on Lizzie.

It was a nice quite night in, not that my lot are very interested in the university clubs and societies that advertise themselves all over with loud messages, sometimes paper posters get stuck over anything staying still for long enough, attract me. We have an ecology and conservation group which I keep well away from. They mainly help with cutting hedges and things on local nature reserves, occasionally something more urban and generally doing good deeds for animals and birds. I did get them offering hedgehog ladders for garden ponds which they made to my spec and did a better job than I did.

I almost went off into my trance recollecting my first sight of a dormouse. It was love at first sight although the one I saw had probably been shot by some Victorian gentleman or trapped and killed. It was in a display by at Bristol Museum and I felt excited by it—a moth eaten specimen if ever I saw one, but it got me hooked. “Finished my pants, Mummy?” Phoebe was back from baby care duties.

“Uh, yes, sweetheart. They’ll need pressing to make them sit properly.”

“They’ll be fine, thanks, Mum.” She pecked me on the cheek and collected her trousers.

“Can you do that with jeans, Dr Watts?” asked Cindy.

“Do what?”

“Shorten them?”

“Of course.”

“Can I bring them next time and you can show me what to do?”

“If you just want to oversew and hem, no problem, but if you want to bind them with bias-binding, which makes a neater job, you’ll need to get some before them.”

“Hey, that sounds good, can we do them with biased binding?”

“It isn’t biased, Cindy, it’s just tape which is cut on the bias to stop it fraying.”

“I’ll get some, don’t worry—maybe we could go shoppin’ at the weekend, Dan?”

“I think I might have a match.”

“Oh, with who?”

“Oh, I forgot the letter.” She went off to get it. “Here,” she said shoving it almost in my face.

She was correct. She’d been picked to play against Scotland in a friendly at Reading. “Does this count as a full cap?”

She shrugged, “I suppose so.”

“You mean you don’t actually know, actually?” asked Trish cattily who then squeaked because she stuck a needle in her finger—poetic justice?

Danni found it hilarious and I had to step in to stop a full blown squabble. “It don’t say, do it, Mummy?” she said drawing me in to the argument.

“No it doesn’t” I replied emphasising the doesn’t.

“Why don’t it?” persisted Trish. Why I’m paying a fortune in school fees baffles me as they can’t even speak the Queen’s English, let alone write it. In order to make sure they still could write with a pen rather than simply type everything, they had to do their homework in pen. I’d bought each of them a nice one and I did enjoy seeing them being used.

“Because it don’t—all right?”

“It doesn’t say, Trish.”

“That’s the FA for you—stands for Fanny Adams.” Of course they all started laughing and it became a giggle fit.

If you’re not one of the gigglers, it gets old very quickly and I wrestled with myself about trying to stop such things. Usually it makes matters worse. Instead I rose and went off to make myself some tea, it had mainly stopped by the time I came back though the odd snort or squeak set off a series of aftershocks for the next half an hour which was when Cindy’s mum came to get her.

Cindy is a very polite young woman and thanked me for having her and helping her get started with her skirt. Her mum thanked me for having her as well and gave me a small posy of flowers, which was nice.

I had a text from James and called him back. It appears the police had spoken to our little friend with the Audi and cautioned him. He was livid calling me all sorts of liar until they showed him the clip from the CCTV camera which James had borrowed from the original.

“How did you manage to get them to act on your behalf?”

“I told them you were my client.”

“And that worked, did it?”

“Duh,” was all he actually said and I felt myself blushing