The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2999 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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It wasn’t long before Lizzie crept down as well and while I was feeding them and trying to make toast for myself, the others descended in dribs and drabs. Before long, I was feeding everyone except Simon, Danielle and our business owners, Julie and Phoebe all of who decided it would be nice to have a lie in.

Jacquie appeared and helped me making toast and dishing out fruit, while I ate my now cold toast and banana. By eight o’clock the melee was over and I set about washing the youngsters. Trish, Livvie, Hannah and Meems looked after themselves and I did the younger two who then giggled when I washed myself despite me telling them to go and put on their playing clothes. It’s a bit off putting to have a five year old and a two year old pointing at your pubes and giggling. However, I ignored it and instead of justifiably murdering them, went and got dressed and then chased them off to do the same.

Normally, the two terrors share a room and Cate mothers Lizzie, helping her dress and things like that; I want all of the children to be used to helping each other and hopefully, they’ll be helpful to others as well. It has to be worth the risk. Occasionally, as was the case today, Lizzie ended up with her trousers on back to front and Cate had her top on inside out. I know they say it’s bad luck to change them but I did anyway, thinking that my luck was pretty poor at the moment so perhaps a change in it could be good. Ha, who am I trying to kid?

As I organised them I reflected upon what I remembered of my weird dreams. I know dreams are always a bit off the wall but the ones last night were particularly so. It was obvious having Spike tell me it was okay to mass murder dormice in the pursuit of knowledge, was my conscience doing the equivalent of self cleaning. Then to hear words in the water running down the plughole, well, I was obviously half asleep, especially as I went off so quickly afterwards. My talk with Daddy had pretty well guaranteed that I gave it my best shot and as he reminded me, I’ve done trickier things—like coming to work in a skirt when they had me down as a boy. I know I had lots of support for it, but I have the same sort of support for this as well. Not sure the girls will be too happy if they hear we’re killing dormice, I know I won’t be either, but if we actually do the research, we’ll almost inevitably need to, to collect brain chemicals, unless someone has already done so.

I’ll need to apply for licences to use them in experiments. I’m still not happy about it but feel I have to try, if only to reward Tom’s faith in me. Boy, what a dilemma.

I absently sorted the children’s clothing and we went downstairs again. Meems came to play with the young uns, they’ll play dollies until she gets fed up or I call them for lunch. David was now in the kitchen, so I made us a cuppa and then went to see what the others were up to.

Simon was up and washing the cars helped by Danni—just like old times. Julie and Phoebe were sitting at the dining room table with Sammi as she explained some sort of software program to them, presumably for their salon. I didn’t want to distract any of them so I stole by and saw Trish was trying to teach Jacquie something on the computer. Livvie was standing by to play the winner or whatever. Once again I crept past them and into my study.

We had a meeting on Tuesday to deal with the proposal we submitted to the university’s ethical committee. Once we had approval, we then applied for licences to do the work—or at least a feasibility study. Any changes that requires may need to go back to the ethics committee and then we set up the equipment we need and do the research, analyse the data and the main players will then discuss the results and I’ll draft a paper which we’ll agree upon—or I use my overrule prerogative and we go for peer review, then submit it to a journal. With a bit of luck, we may even get paid for it.

If it has the reaction I expect, the lesser authors will probably be open to offers from universities all over the country and possibly from abroad too. I am hoping too, that our research will be helpful to medicine. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to hibernate but if it lowers stress or helps to ease spinal pain, it has to be worthy of the effort. As for the Mars mission—they can do what they like because they will anyway.

I can’t honestly see men on Mars in the next twenty years unless something significant happens in technology or knowledge, it’s far more likely there’ll be a major war and if the nationalists are not either happy or annihilated there’ll be another, possibly more.

Listening to the news, I am astonished at the amount of violence that seems to have been perpetrated in the previous month culminating in the murder of the priest in France and attempted murder of another by two young men, who in turn were shot by police. Then there was the nutcase teenager who shot a dozen or more people, mainly youngsters, because he was bullied; add to this the truck in Nice plus dozens of bombs all over the Middle east and it just about sum things up.

It feels nonsensical that in the twenty first century we are still fighting wars about religion yet no nearer to evidence that any of these gods actually exist. If their belief made them more compassionate or informed in dealing with others, I’d have no problem with religion. As it appears to do the opposite, I tend to consider it the biggest con played on mankind by themselves and have little time for those who use it to justify fighting wars or hurting people.

It’s patently obvious that there are some really nice believers as well as the not nice ones, what I don’t understand is why the moderates don’t try and stop the problems the others cause. There are millions of Moslems worldwide so why don’t they try to stop the lunacy between the two factions fighting for dominance. How can a Sunni killing a Shia be useful or helpful or the other way round? It’s like Catholics and protestants a hundred years or more ago.

To my mind, religion should be teaching tolerance and acceptance—it does, but on the terms of those running the religion. So while they’re still there we’ll fight religious wars. The solution seems obvious.