The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3021 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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The next day after sorting out some early shopping for food Trish and Livvie came with me to help carry the bags and try and influence my choice of meals and perhaps either cadge some sweets or convince me to buy ice cream. I did buy ice cream but not the variety they wanted. The consequence, we had two pouting tweenies all the way home.

This summer has been extremely hot on continental Europe and even the UK has had temperatures touching the thirties, so come mid morning the girls were trying to devise some sort of activity in the pool that wouldn’t cause them to spontaneously combust. Most of us were sitting under umbrellas or the gazebo, out on the patio near the pool when Danielle decided on a diving contest.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about it as the deep end is only about two and a half metres deep, which isn’t deep enough for clever diving manoeuvres. However, when it was shown what she had in mind, the recovery of an object from the water, it seemed less dangerous.

The object was a small flat stone about three inches in diameter which would be thrown in by someone other than the diver for the diver to recover against the clock. We had a timing device on several of the mobile phones, so getting someone to time it was easy enough. The time ran from the time when they dived in, in other words as soon as their feet left the side of the pool, until the stone was deposited on the side of the pool.

Danielle was favourite and decided as it was her idea, she’d go first. It was just after she entered the water, she realised the difficulties of diving and swimming in a bikini and there were lots of giggles as she had to abort her first attempt to pull her bra top back down over her breasts. I was surprised that she hadn’t discovered this already, that the pull of the water when you dive into it or swim actively is enough to dislodge many bikini tops, especially those more designed to be seen in than swum in.

As they were all wearing bikinis it became increasingly obvious that none of them were going to be able to complete the exercise without changing their costumes and I even offered to go and get their one piece swimsuits for them. No instead they decided to swim topless. That was fine as long as there were no visitors. The place is surrounded by a six foot high wall with bushes inside that. It has sharp spikes on the top to discourage entry over the wall but wouldn’t stop a determined climber or burglar.

Theoretically, no one should be able to see over the wall and the next property is fifty yards away with an equally high wall but it could be possible to see into the patio from next door’s roof veranda although I wasn’t sure if anyone was actually staying there at the present time.

Regardless of my concerns they all took off their tops and continued the diving contest. I sat and read my book far enough away to be out of the splash zone and out of the sun under the umbrella on my reclining garden chair. Of course I fell asleep and they all grabbed a bucket of water and after removing my book, threw it over me.

Waking suddenly can be quite traumatic and leave you with a muzzy head. Waking suddenly because of a bucket of relatively cold water drenching one, is even more traumatic and I admit, it took some time before my sense of humour caught up with that of the perpetrators. Stephanie was indoors with the two little ones so didn’t see either the plotting or execution of the crime.

I nearly fell out of my chair and of course once I’d recovered enough to stand up gave them all a tongue lashing deciding that the trip we’d planned that afternoon would now be cancelled. The laughing became embarrassment and then tears before I’d finished and Danni ran off to her room. I had to go and shower and change and was still fuming when I dried my hair.

After changing, I sorted lunch. We had omelettes with salad and French stick. We ate on the patio and the water that had been sent my way had pretty well dried up by the time we ate and my chair was dry enough for me to sit on to eat. Stephanie and I talked about the prank that been perpetrated upon me and she thought it was funny. I told her I thought it was beyond funny verging on aggression and she took my point but still laughed. Bloody psychiatrists, what do they know about people?

On completing lunch and clearing up thereafter, I told the children to stay in the house for an hour or two because it was too hot for them to be outside. The temperature was touching thirty four and as they had no need to be out in it, I made them come in. There were moans and groans but they settled down playing board games, computer games or just reading.

Stephanie and I sat down with cuppas for a chat about the next day which was going to be warm again. We decided we’d go to Santa Tomas, visit the caves and walk down the gorge and back. We’d have lunch at one of the cafes and make sure we had plenty of water with us and sun cream. I also checked that they all had their sun hats with them. Of course, I’d forgotten mine so I tacked a small headscarf to the back of a baseball cap and it was sort of impromptu French Foreign Legion, but I reckoned would do the trick and possibly better than a wide brimmed hat.

I may yet murder Stephanie. How did I know she was into old films and she kept calling me Beau Geste. I looked it up on the internet and found it was a film starring Gary Cooper made in 1939. Although the plot looked quite interesting I decided I wouldn’t include it on my ‘to watch’ list which was already too long.

Trish came trotting out to me and saw the hat, then burst out laughing. The way it was going I’d be murdering half of them before the holiday was over—wonder if I could get refunds on the air tickets?

“What d’you want?” I asked her briskly.

“There’s a thing on the internet about dormice an’ otters.”

“Really?”

“Well, come an’ see, took me ages to con the server into thinking we were in England.”

“Couldn’t we watch it on Sky?”

“Oh bugger,” she said, “I didn’t think of that.”