Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 3475

The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3475 by Angharad Copyright© 2024/2025 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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I went to work leaving Meems under the care of Danni, David and Emily. Maureen was on her way and a window company was coming to meet her here to see if they could arrange an identical window, the house is Grade 11 listed and we have to get permission to change the loo roll. While I was updating myself on the state of play in my department with Diane, we received a call from the police to ask if I had anything to do with a fire at John Henderson's luxury apartment. This was followed by a visit from Chief Inspector Dawes, the copper who had been hounding me.

It appears that whoever set fire to his apartment also locked the door and there was only one way into and out of the place, I was shocked, was he in there? They told me that human remains were found in the flat which unofficially were thought to be Henderson's. He would have died from smoke inhalation before the fire got to him. The fire seemed to originate with a computer, so it could have been an unfortunate accident. To me it seemed as if MI6 were becoming more subtle, though I had no proof of it. When I spoke to James, he swore he had no part in it but it looked like the security agency had struck again. Apparently, if you had access to the flat it was very easy to cause a computer to overheat and catch fire without use of accelerants or explosives.

The door had been locked and the lock was sufficiently jammed to make it difficult or impossible to open. It seemed, that whoever set the place on fire was intending that Henderson, if he was there, wasn't coming out of it alive. It was certainly more subtle than petrol though the letter box but just as awful. It was murder, but it was so clever to be seen as such, because of the accidental start of the fire. It seemed the chief suspect was his ex-wife. Their divorce had been acrimonious and she and the children got a very rough deal from the courts. I remembered reading about it a couple of years ago. However, the police seemed to think the money would be left to the children in trust.

James told me that some of the small timers in the county lines gang had been arrested by police, and who when they were told that somebody was looking to kill them, spilt the beans quicker than a rip in the sack. They weren't told the name of the body that was pursuing them, so they were left to imagine it was me and the bank. The first thing that one of them told the police that, "They thought it was a mistake to petrol bomb my house."

James suspected that information had been gathered from the flat before it was torched, this could be used as evidence by police, but it could also be used to exploit the customers who were buying the coke. I wanted the customers to be prosecuted, it was their fault that the supply chain existed, and most of them were wealthy people who wanted to spice up their lives, so used drugs to do that. I'd like to have seen all of them spend a few weeks in prison, giving them a criminal record. Without their customers, the supply chain would soon languish.

The rich and famous who use drugs tend to be protected from prosecution or are able to pay the fines with ease, my way was designed to strip away that protection and possibly endanger their overpaid jobs, as employers may discriminate against those with a criminal record and terminate their jobs. I never understood the need to have chemically or pharmaceutically induced highs because to me making love with the man I loved or watching your kids succeed at something or seeing the wonders of nature gave me a sense of magic, especially when these things were often by-passed by people every day, walking or driving past them without pausing to look, usually because they were trying to make money and therefore didn't have a moment to spare.

Some of these things lived in puddles or in bushes and were microscopic or cryptically coloured. How many had seen rotifers or water fleas, hen harriers or sparrow hawks. They were all declining and harder to see, but were there if you took the time to look. People don't which is why they are declining. It took the pollution of Windermere, England's largest lake before something was done to try and clean up the sewage. Britain's largest lake, Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, is already heavily polluted, which tends to demonstrate the polluters don't seem to care be they water companies or farmers or industrialists, so they should have huge fines and jail sentences as punishment, also, if a water company, they should be nationalised to prevent it happening again The agencies that protect us from such things should be made to improve their monitoring and given powers to destroy such environmentally damaging companies. What politicians don't seem to understand - they don't seem to understand anything that doesn't bring a bribe - or don't want to understand, is that what is the point of economic growth if the planet or all the people are dead? Bird flu is still about and one form is able to switch between species, birds to cows to foxes to people. If climate change doesn't get us first, the next pandemic might and is likely to be worse than Covid was, and remember how that altered our activities and showed people in their true colours, some were wonderful, some were evil, and some were victims of the disease or the scammers. Humans would be a wonderful species if they were extinct, sadly they aren't and will continue despoiling this amazing planet, perhaps we should send them all to Mars, with only enough fuel to get there, Musk could lead the expedition.

Apparently he is upset that Americans are boycotting his cars, but the way he is destroying US democracy with his friends Trump and Vance, is it surprising? The Guardian carried a clip of Vance being booed at the Washington Opera house before a concert of classical music.

Good job I'm not in charge because we'd need a number of new prisons but I'd only put people in them who deserved to be there, but the planet would be in better shape and I suspect the various enterprises affected would be better for the clean out of crooks and leisure-drug takers.

Every time there was a suspicious accident or death, the police came to see if I had anything to do with it. I didn't and was becoming heartily fed up with their intrusions. Some of the deaths were probably pure accident, but the county lines gang continued to be the victims, but also we heard of people in high profile jobs being found with cocaine on their person or traces of it in their body or hair. Apparently, all these drugs leave a marker and if you have a lab and the resources to run the proper tests, you can find it if it's there. The papers were full of councillors having to resign because they had traces of cocaine on them or in their possession. The bank lost one or two as well as did other banks, and I wrote to the local press saying how I thought these rich twats were the real criminals because if they didn't want cocaine, the supply chain wouldn't exist. We had enacted a rule at the university that said if anyone was caught with drugs on them or seen trying to sell or buy them, they could be suspended and dismissed.

It appeared that there was strong public feeling, some of them calling me a turncoat, because I was relatively wealthy myself, and others trying to suggest the drugs should be legalised and supply chain controlled by the government and the drugs taxed. I'm surprised the chancellor hasn't already done it, it's one thing she hasn't yet taxed. I popped into a shop one Tuesday evening and was astonished at the number of old people buying lottery tickets and spending quite large amounts of money to do so. I wondered if it was just a form of escapism, selling dreams because the chances of winning a huge amount of money was infinitely small, so small it was effectively a legal scam, where the greed of the ticket purchaser kept them shelling out for very small wins. They were spending much more than they won back.

On a more positive note, I saw that the UK output of carbon was the same as in 1872 or some such date, when it was much lower but we have to remember that coal fired everything, including cooking, keeping warm and industry. Dropping coal as a power for generating electricity was the probable cause. I also saw that William Collins the publishing house was started by William Collins who was a self educated mill worker and who wanted people to be more educated; well I am and have a couple of dozen books published by them, including identification guides to all sorts of things from birds to lichen and beyond. More specialised guides tend to produced by scientific bodies such as the Freshwater Biological Association, or the Field Studies Council, who are mainly aimed at enthusiasts or students.

I eventually got home that evening and Meems and Danni were looking at specimens of pond water under one of my microscopes. Danni I could understand, but Meems? She liked her hands clean, but was gushing with delight at whatever she was seeing under the microscope. "How come you've never showed them to me before?" she asked me accusingly.

In my defence I told her I had been playing with aquatic invertebrates since I was a young teenage girl and I had tried to get them all interested in the magic of magnification to things we walk past but don't see with the naked eye. She didn't seem to remember but seeing as she couldn't yet walk very far she had accepted Danni's invitation to participate in Danni's project and see the microscopic life contained in a drop of water let alone a whole puddle. she seemed entirely enamoured of the display nature provided and it took away the anxiety and pain she had been feeling since her assault. Funnily I had heard that even virtual nature could help ease people's pain, so looking at pictures of landscapes or cities could ease pain to some extent. It was all just reinforcing what I had always believed, those with access to nature felt much happier with themselves and others while being outdoors. Those of us who spend some time outdoors realised this years ago and some doctors are telling people to walk in the park or hug a tree, because it is so intrinsic in our make up that we do react to nature but only until we scent money and then we mostly become prepared to sell our souls and everything else to gain some. We are back to the lottery and dreams, where as I am living my dreams, I am living as female, I have lovely children and am married to a handsome and delightful man who happens to own a bank, but I am still involved with nature and now teach it to possibly like-minded individuals. Who needs a lottery?