The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2835 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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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.
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I ran the DVD and waited as it booted up then gasped. “Which camera took these?”

“The one that points up towards the orchard.”

“Remarkable—oh look, she’s got him.”

“How long will she have him?”

“Three or four hours it can last.”

“How come they’re not extinct, ’cos it must hurt.”

“The urge to procreate is very strong in most species. He should be very grateful he’s a red fox not a praying mantis.”

“Is that the one that eats her mate while they do it?”

“Yes.”

“Gross.”

“From a human perspective, but chewing his head off makes him copulate even more powerfully and the protein he provides gives her eggs a better start. A total sacrifice to the continuation of the species.”

“So any male mantis walking about is either a virgin or gay?”

“I’d never thought of it like that.”

Sammi chuckled to herself, “Goodness I’ve made a professor see something differently.”

“Hey, I’m your mother not just any old know it all.”

“Oh, that’s different then.”

“I need a cuppa, have you put this on youtube yet?”

“Is it worth it?”

“Who knows, they have loads of very stupid ones, so this should be a bit more watchable by ordinary people.”

“Watch explicit, live sex on camera,” she said in an excited voice.

“Don’t say it too loud you’ll have Trish wanting to watch it.”

“Is she always obsessed with sex?”

“Only while she’s awake, why?”

“I just wondered.”

“She’s coming into puberty and was also abused at the home, she has some things to put into perspective before they can be integrated.”

“Sounds difficult.”

“She still sees Stephanie and I think she’s made quite a bit of progress.”

“Good.”

We reached the kitchen and I filled the kettle, because no one else ever seems to, and switched it on.

“So what happens with the foxes?” asked Sammi as we sat at the kitchen table sipping our teas.

“Once the preliminaries are over and copulation begins she goes into vaginal spasm which locks him inside her for a couple of hours or more.”

“So do all sexually experienced male foxes have scrotums that drag along the ground?” she asked laughing, “Poor little buggers.”

“It seems to work as fox populations appear to be quite high.”

“What with no hunting, you mean?”

“Most of the hunts ignore the ban and carry on regardless. Remember the law is there to protect the over-privileged at the expense of the poor.”

“So which category d’you come into?” she asked.

“Me? I’m a champagne socialist but not a backer of Mr Corbyn.”

“What was that about women in Germany being sexually harassed or assaulted on New Year’s Eve?”

“I only heard about it on the radio this morning, all I heard was they appeared to all be immigrant men who were the perpetrators and they seemed to be coordinating it across several German cities. I’m not sure what it was all about but I can’t believe it was done for positive reasons.”

“It’s quite frightening.”

“Yes it is, I presume these migrants must know European laws are different to Islamic law and should learn to adapt to their new homeland’s laws.”

“When in Rome?”

“Quite.”

“They certainly seem to think we should obey their laws when we go there.”

I decided I wasn’t going to get drawn into an argument on religion, my position was clear—I did not believe in any goddess or gods so wouldn’t countenance support for laws to enforce those fantasies.

“I don’t have a problem with that except they tend to protect their own people over visitors according to one or two folks I’ve met who’ve lived there.”

“Do we do the same?”

“I hope not.”

“Did you see those piccies on the internet about that trans woman in Italy who’s had loads of surgery.”

“No I haven’t.”

“She’s now got lips that take up half her face.”

“I think I’ll pass on looking at those.”

“She hasn’t had her dangly bits sorted but had her bum enhanced and boob jobs and so on, spent a fortune.”

“I suppose if you have the money, how you spend it is up to you.”

“Yeah, but she looks like a caricature, and a pretty bad one at that. I wondered if her plastic surgeon is blind.”

“Sounds like she has a real problem in accepting herself, in which case no amount of surgery will make her acceptable—sad—I think they call it dysmorphobia or something similar.”

“Sounds pretty gruesome. You’ve never felt anything like that?”

“All women have problems with some part of their bodies.”

“Do they? What is your one then?”

“Apart from the plumbing problem which has been sorted as best as they can, I suppose it’s lack of the internal bits and I could wish I was better looking.”

“What? You are beautiful.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well I do, and you’ve got a drop dead gorgeous figure, unlike me.”

I thought the opposite, I thought she was more beautiful than I and with a better figure. “Looks like we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

She shook her head, “You are really good looking, Mummy. Just accept it and use it more like you did in the films you made.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well in those two films you seduced every male and any lesbians watching, you were professional but sexy—I wish I could do it.”

So do I, I had no idea what she was talking about, I just stood in front of the camera and said what we’d agreed I’d say. Alan made the odd suggestion but most of it was my ideas or how I thought I should do it. So how was that sexy? I didn’t understand, I really didn’t.

She went off to finish playing with her computers leaving me feeling more inadequate than ever. I got the younger girls off to bed and read them a short story. Then it was a question of chasing Danielle up to bed, except when I looked she’d already gone and was asleep when I checked her room. I hoped she wasn’t going down with something. Finally, I announced I was going to bed to read another chapter of my Brunetti story, this one was very complex and about his efforts to determine whether a deaf mute was murdered or died accidentally.

I didn’t read for long, I couldn’t concentrate and put down my book and switched off the light. I don’t remember Simon coming to bed let alone him getting up again. But all too soon it was back to the grindstone and the daily chore of getting a handful of girls up and ready for school or work. It was bad enough now with the squabbles over the bathrooms what it would be like in a few years time I hated to contemplate, but at the moment there was nowhere else available to build extra bathrooms. Oh the joys of motherhood—and they were relatively well behaved for monsters.