The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2969 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 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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“Looks like that moron we met earlier will be on the winning side,” I said to Daddy at dinner.

“Aye.”

“Who’s this?” asked Si.

“Some Tory MP who came spouting rubbish about Brexit to the academic council. He got clamped.”

“Clamped, what d’you mean?”

“He had the temerity to pinch my parking space and because he wasn’t displaying a permit, he got clamped. He had to wait an hour for release and then get Daddy to tell the porter to unclamp him.”

“Aye, he wisnae impressed, wis late fa his next meetin’.”

“Serves him right.”

“Oh well so what do we do, just sit and wait for everything to go belly up?”

“Looks that way, FTSE is down again, shares are flat, pound is down against most currencies.”

“It’s nice to know that the Great British electorate still has some influence—even if it is for screwing things up.”

“It’s not quite over yet, but the cause seems pretty well lost to a load of lies and racism. Sadly, by the time the public realise they’ve been conned, it’ll be too late. Fifth biggest economy, I wonder where we’ll finish?”

“Can we talk about something else?” asked Julie. “It sounds as if the world is going to end.”

“If Putin thinks it’ll weaken NATO, it might well do eventually.”

“Oh well, so we’ll be Russian not Islamic, whoopee doo.”

“I expect Boris will deport them all to Ireland and see if he can talk President Trump into building a wall between Ulster and Eire,” I offered tongue in cheek.

“What to keep the Mexicans out?” asked Julie.

“They already had one in Belfast.” Simon reminded us.

“What, a Mexican?” asked Julie aghast, “What Taco Bell?”

“No, a wall.”

“I thought that was Berlin and Israel,” suggested Stella.

“If we’re the fifth biggest economy...”

“We were fourth until about fifteen years ago,” remarked Simon, ruefully.

“So, is that fifth in Europe or the world?”

“World, in Europe only Germany is bigger.”

“So, if the second biggest economy in the EU pulls out, won’t it damage the EU?” asked Julie.

“I’m sure some of the Brexit voters are hoping so.”

“Will MEPs have to get proper jobs?” asked Stella proving she was still awake.

I was tired of the whole bloody thing; like the general election, whatever I voted for lost. No wonder the EU doesn’t like democracy, voters are pretty stupid. I started clearing the table while they chewed the fat. Any transgender person who voted for Brexit seems to have forgotten that Blair’s government only passed legislation because the Court of Human Rights told it to. Until that happened, the UK government was prepared to keep up its prejudice against transgender people.

What really worried me was the rise of the right-wing which included nationalism, which is what Brexit is about. It happened seventy years ago too just before the Second World War erupted.

Britain is the biggest European military power unless you consider Russia to be in Europe. Our armed services are in disarray—nothing new there, but we have destroyers and frigates that have engine failure, needing bigger turbines or something. So where all these boats are going to come from to police the seas around Britain to keep out Johnny Foreigner, is questionable. Successive British governments have let us down, so perhaps we have the government we deserve—except I didn’t vote them in, neither will I vote to leave.

Part of me felt very down and I almost wanted just to run away and hide, for a long time. I felt disgusted with my fellow man, there only seemed to be negative stuff happening, all of it man-made and preventable. Roll on bird-flu, if it thinned us down by half, there’d still be too many of us. Human’s are the bane of this wonderful planet, despoiling it with greed and overpopulation. We have to do something about it other than fighting wars.

I see the first mammal casualty directly linked to climate change, a mouse in Australia which inhabited a specific island, with sea ice melting the island was flooded and the mice are now extinct. Sometimes I feel I’m fighting a losing battle against the forces of entropy which are intent on destroying all that’s beautiful on this amazing planet—mankind is its main agent: the insatiable, voracious, destructive and vindictive ape. An example of which probably lives next door to you, but is not as nasty as some Baptist minister in the States who tweeted or whatever, that the lunatic who shot all those people in the gay club only half did the job, he should have killed them all. In the UK he’d have been arrested for inciting violence, not sure what will happen in the US probably nothing. Bigots—don’t you just love ’em?

So Cliff Richard has been cleared of any abuse against young men and South Yorkshire Police have apologised for taking a film crew with them when they searched his house—duh. Sometimes people are unbelievable.

It’s just come on the news that a Yorkshire MP has died after being shot and stabbed by some idiot who complained about her sympathetic attitude to immigrants. That is beyond understanding, rather like that woman congress member who was shot in the States a few years ago. She survived, sadly Jo Cox didn’t. There is no way such behaviour can ever be justified, the man must be crazy. If he didn’t like her why not just campaign against her at the next election? What a completely pointless and useless act and this one perpetrated by presumably someone who’d consider themselves a patriot. How twisted some people’s thinking must be.

It would be so easy just to give up and let the entropy win, it will in the end anyway, the laws of thermodynamics predict it, not that I’m any sort of expert on it. I was sitting in my study feeling despair when Livvie came in.

“Mummy?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Did you know it was this time of year when I first came to live with you, when my old parents died.”

“Goodness, is it?” I’d forgotten.

“Yes, I just came to say that I’m glad you helped me see what happened and not to feel so badly about it. I was really angry with them because they didn’t really want me, did they?”

“I don’t really know, sweetheart. People often do things which are driven more by emotion than logic and sometimes those are for the good, sometimes not. I try not to judge them, although at times it’s very difficult.”

“You taking me in, that was love, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a really good thing for you to do as you were so busy the last thing you needed was me.”

“I can’t remember clearly what happened other than you needed someone to look after you and we had room here to take you. We all liked you and wanted to help and you wanted to stay with us—so that’s what happened. We all still love you very much, which I hope you know.”

“I do, Mummy, I’m very lucky that you did take me in. I just came to say thank you.”

We hugged and my eyes filled with tears as I remembered why I fight to protect and nurture those things which are dear to me, be they my family, or dormice or whatever—because if I stop, what is the point of anything?