The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2849 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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“Where have you got to go?”

“Reading again.”

“Have you told Portsmouth?”

“The FA usually do that, request permission for me to be released.”

“Sounds like you’re in prison.”

“Yeah, St Claire’s for noxious nuns.”

“Who’s been noxious to you?” I joked but was quite serious in my question.

“No one, it’s what we call it.”

“Who’s we—the girls you mean?”

“Yeah, I’m one of the girls if you remember?”

“Are you, goodness I’d forgotten that.”

She rolled her eyes, “You get like that when you’re old,” was the rejoinder which I half expected.

“You’d better watch out then in case I get so old I forget to give you your pocket money.”

“You already have forgotten.”

“Oh no you don’t, Missy, you’re not going to catch me with that old one.”

“Oh well worth a try.”

“I thought you played soccer not rugby?”

“Yeah, what’s that got to do with the price of tampons?”

“You what?”

She roared with laughter, “That’ll teach ya,” she said and laughed some more.

“How are you getting to Reading?”

“Thought I’d ask you or Dad.”

“He’s up in town, not sure when he’ll be back.”

“Will you take me then?”

“I really don’t know what I have to do this weekend. If I have time, I will.”

“Gee thanks, I get a chance to get back into the England squad and you might not be able to take me.”

“Danielle, I said I would if I could. It just so happens I have other children to look after as well as you.”

“Duh, as if I’m not aware of that.”

“You’re beginning to sound as if that might be the case. I try to treat you all the same, but when you go away on these jaunts it means you get more than your usual amount of my attention.”

“Well I can’t help it if I’m the only one with any talent.

“I beg your pardon.”

She nearly doubled up with laughter. “Works every time with you.”

“What does?”

“Winding you up. You’re always so worried one of us is going to have a gram more than the others.”

“Is that a positive or negative gram?”

“What?”

“The gram is it positive or negative?”

“I dunno what you’re on about.”

“So is it positive or negative?”

“I told you, I don’t flippin’ know, all right?” she screeched at me.

“I think you’re even easier than I am to wind up, don’t you?”

“So it was a load of rubbish?”

“Uh no, gram is a type of stain used in microscopy and most bacteria are either positive or negative to it, meaning they do or don’t take up the stain. It’s one way of classifying bacteria.”

“Like I need to know that.”

“You never know when you might need to know something.”

“I think I can be quite categorical about this one.”

“You dropping biology, then?

“No, why?”

“Well if you go on to do A level biology, you might need to think about Hans Christian Gram.”

“I thought that was Hans Christian Anderson.”

“Another Dane, but this one was a biologist not a story teller.”

“That sounds a bit Grimm.”

“Very good.” She beamed at my compliment which was sincerely meant. Danni is not the quickest mind and she lacks a lot of confidence in such things compared with Trish and Livvie who are like greased lightning and brimming with confidence in things like word games, Livvie even more so than Trish.

“So are you gonna be able to take me?”

“When have you got to be there?”

She handed me the letter, “Friday evening to Sunday afternoon.”

“Tomorrow. Okay but I might have to ask Julie to come and get you.”

“If you let her drive your car she probably will.”

“Auntie Stella might.”

“Uh forget it, I’ll cycle up there.”

“That sounds like you’ve travelled with Auntie Stella?”

“Twice, I don’t want to go a third time even wearing cycle clips.”

This time I roared with laughter. The expression in this family is taken to mean the wearer is expecting a bout of diarrhoea. In this case, fright induced variety.

“What’s Daddy doing up in town?”

“There’s a problem with stocks and shares, the Dow Jones and Footsie have dropped very badly.”

“Wassat mean?”

“The Dow Jones is the index of shares at the New York stock exchange and the Footsie is actually the Financial Times share index at the London stock exchange. These are based on the amount the price of shares go up or down. The top listed hundred companies in London are called the Footsie one hundred and it’s these which are used to calculate the rise and fall.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means people who buy or sell shares have got chicken livered and sold at the first sign of trouble and will probably hope to buy back when the shares are much cheaper. Sometimes they even start these things deliberately because all the people involved are so anal, so if one sells they all do hoping to get rid of their shares before the price drops too low. The bears, as they call them, then wait until the shares are at a lowest price and buy up huge quantities which when things recover, they can sell at huge profits.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“It is but people do it and they destroy companies sometimes even currencies or the economies of troubled governments.”

“Why isn’t it illegal?”

“Because the people who profit the most are the sort who make the laws.”

“Typical,” she said dismissively sounding like a typical teen.

“Daddy doesn’t do that does he?”

“No, he used to sort of do things with the price of commodities but now he just runs the high street sort of bank.”

“I thought it was High Street Banks?”

“It is, partly called because the sort of bank they are is a high street type of bank, one of the London clearing banks.”

“Is that something different again?”

“No, it was just a name for the bigger banks because they act as distributors for the pound on behalf of the Bank of England.”

“Isn’t that a high street type of bank then?”

“No, the Bank of England, is the national bank which runs the value of currency in this country and manages the level of inflation.”

“So you can’t like go in there to cash a cheque?”

“No, you can’t have an account there.”

“I don’t understand why it has to be so complicated.”

“It wouldn’t be if it happened today but it didn’t, it all happened hundreds of years ago, and in those days there weren’t pound notes they had hand written notes signed by the secretary of the Bank of England. They were promissory notes rather than what we call bank notes these days and were notes of credit, so the bearer or person carrying it was worthy of credit up to the amount of the note. In Dickens’ day, a pound was a great deal of money probably worth hundreds now.”

Danni shook her head, “I think I’ve had enough history for today, thanks Mummy.”

“For what?”

“Saying you’ll take me tomorrow.”

“But I didn’t...” she was gone before I finished—cheeky little maggot.