The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3071 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 morning I took the girls to school and got permission from Sister Maria to have Danielle accompany me to see Rushton Henstridge whenever he could fit us in. It turned out that he sacrificed his lunch time to squeeze us in and I admitted that if we hadn’t passed a Tesco on the way there and grabbed some sandwiches, neither Danni nor I would have had any either.

He understood my daughter’s predicament and explained that if she didn’t want to meet with her birth mother, no one could force her to. He also explained that he could write a letter to the agency and say in the vaguest terms that he had spoken to ‘the child in question who expressed a definite wish not to meet the birth mother.’ This would gloss over the gender issue and which we all felt happier about.

I took her back to school eating the second of my salmon and cucumber sandwich as we went—no wonder I got indigestion all afternoon—the lack of a cuppa to wash it down was the obvious cause. Danni wiped the crumbs off her uniform and after pecking me on the cheek disappeared into the school.

“Go all right, boss?” asked Diane as I returned to our new office—we’d moved the day before and neither of us could find anything that wasn’t in a filing cabinet. I’d actually spent part of the morning rearranging my collection of mammal skulls and skeletons including a badger and fox skull, a whole dormouse and yellow necked mouse skeleton and a stuffed red squirrel which Tom had acquired from some auction he went to a year or two ago. I never went to them in case I ended up buying a lorry load of rubbish because I scratched my ear.

The books we’d arranged on the new shelves the afternoon before and the journals were all in a series of magazine holders I actually paid for myself. Then there were over a dozen box files full of articles or copies of papers I took from journals on line or in the university library. Like most universities, we had an extensive library of scientific journals and papers. There were also a pile of CDs some with things like my birdsong one and the other papers and journals I’d saved to disc to try and cut down on the amount of paper. If the place caught fire it would burn for days.

In the end, I managed to convince Tom that laminate flooring would be most serviceable and we had a few scatter rugs with rubber backing to stop them scattering, if you get my drift. There was a large rug in front of the two sofas which faced each other with a coffee table over the top for informal meetings and long boardroom table at the other end of my office. It was palatial even compared to Tom’s old office and compared to my original broom cupboard, it felt like a stadium.

I did make Diane flinch when I said I was going to put my golf mat and clubs by the window. I only did it for badness, her previous boss had apparently been a golf fanatic and was always putting in his office which drove her up the wall. I did however have a staple put in the wall of the landing outside our suite to moor my bike to in the summer months, it went with the shower cubicle in our toilet suite—a loo, wash basin, shower cubicle and place to have a fridge and boil the kettle. There was just about room to swing a dormouse in there giving barely enough room to dress or change clothing after riding in. I was seriously thinking of buying a cheaper road bike and leaving it there with some cycling clothes and shoes and I could then have a ride lunch time if the weather was suitable and I actually had time. A nice idea but probably unfeasible.

What made me gasp was Diane saying she might start riding in as well, if she could shower and change in work. I didn’t even know she had a bike let alone rode it. Her response to my surprise was typical, “Just because you ride one doesn’t mean us proles can’t do the same.” I moved next business and went back to arranging my stuffed tufty.

I gave it a good look through the glass case and couldn’t see any signs of nodules on it, so possibly it was one that met its maker before leprosy became widespread amongst the red squirrel population. It’s rife on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour which given the isolation of the population there, it’s not surprising that it should spread throughout. The infection is Mycobacterium leprae which is the same form of the disease which infects humans though the risks of being infected by a squirrel are minimal to negligible. I’d been told by someone that the squirrels were introduced but my researches so far have suggested that they are indigenous. I must get over there again one of these days as the birdwatching is very good, especially in Poole harbour which usually has avocets and spoonbills during the autumn and winter.

The island was made famous by Baden-Powell who ran an experimental camp there in 1907 from which evolved the scouting movement which had a centenary jamboree celebration there nine years ago, part of the island is dedicated to the scout and guide movement and they have a sort of permanent camp there. I remembered seeing the monument to Baden-Powell when I was there but my own experience of a local scout-master gave me a rather jaundiced view of any organisation which encourages stopovers with a mixture of adults and adolescents.

My problem was in being such a girlish youth, complete with spreading hips and long hair, I was taken for being gay and thus approached by adults who presumed I’d be up for a bit of slap and tickle and were then angry because I wasn’t, in fact, the idea of any physical intimacy at that point in my life was repulsive to me. My repulses alas usually led me to me being ostracised for leading them on like a cock teasing girl, and my only visit to a weeklong camp was spent mostly on my own avoiding the activities of the others and I ended up sleeping in the minibus at nights because the scout leader had falsely accused me of coming on to him. I lost half a stone that week, which made me look even more girlish, eating only what I could steal from the kitchen before the others were about. If they caught me I was usually kicked or punched. My skills in fieldcraft improved decidedly with practice and I learned how to move around the camp in the dark without them seeing or hearing me.

The miserable bastard who’d falsely accused me met someone far more aggressive than me a few years later and he was stabbed to death by the boy in his panic to escape—he should have known that boy scouts carry knives—can’t say I had any sympathy for him.