The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1526 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

We stopped at the Leigh Delamare services, not far from Chippenham. Caroline tootled off to the ladies whilst I grabbed a Guardian and some refreshments in the restaurant. Crazy prices they charge at these places, for the cost of a coffee, I can cook a ten course meal for a hundred and fifty people–well it feels like that. I got us two coffees and a doughnut each and paid a larger amount than my parents mortgage had been.

She eventually found me and we ate in relative silence. “You were very quiet back there.”

“Back where?”

“Where that lorry tried to turn us into mincemeat.”

“What’s there to say? We survived–end of story.”

“We could have been killed.”

“In which case I could have saved a fortune on two stale doughnuts.”

“You seem to take it very laid back.”

“On today’s roads it happens all the time.”

“Well I’ve never been that close to death before.”

“You get used to it.”

“What d’you mean, get used to it?”

“I have been shot at, stabbed, hit by cars, crashed cars, come off my bike and I’m still here.”

“Obviously St Peter doesn’t want you yet,” she joked.

“Pity, if he had me maybe he’d leave my kids alone.”

“Eh–oh, I see what you mean–sorry.”

“That’s okay. I said goodbye to Billie in a dream last night, so I feel better about things.”

“They say people often dream of their dead friends and rellies.”

“I do, but this is the first time one of them was accompanied by an Old Testament goddess.”

“Wow, heavy stuff–d’you remember any of it.”

I told her about my recollections and she looked at me in astonishment.

“More than heavy, you like get the Queen of Heaven as a guardian for young Billie and the magic to chase off this demoness thing you’d had pester before. My dreams are far simpler, waking up standing naked on the platform at Paddington or being locked in the ladies loo in some big office block that I’ve never been before.”

“C’mon, let’s go, I’ve just remembered I’ve got some mending to do, Danny ripped his trousers the last day in school.”

“You’re married to an investment banker and you mend the children’s clothes.”

“Yeah, so? Have you seen the price of repairs or alterations? No, I do my own, don’t you?”

“Um, no–I never learned.”

“Oh well, now’s your chance. Have you ever used a sewing machine?”

“Not really, Mum showed me how to wind a bobbin, but that was about it.”

“Okay, next time I get mine out, you can have a little go.”

“Do your other children sew?”

“They can all sew on a button, including Danny, and at a pinch, could hem a pair of trousers.”

“Wow, you really are a mother, aren’t you?”

I looked at her in disbelief–but then she really didn’t know me that well.

“Who taught you?”

“Primarily, my mother.”

“What, after you transitioned?”

“No, she died about that time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, and before you think the shock killed her, it didn’t.”

“It hadn’t even occurred to me,” she said but the way she was blushing, it had.

“She taught me when I was kid. I used to take her socks with holes in the toes and she got fed up and made me learn to do my own. She even gave me a wooden mushroom, which I’ve still got–it was my grandmother’s.”

“She taught you to darn socks?”

“Yes, and then it went to sewing on buttons, turning up trousers which were too long, sewing on a patch...”

“Making your own dresses?” chipped in my passenger.

“I wish, no I had to use what I knew and get a couple of books. I’ve made myself the odd skirt, but it’s more about altering off the peg things.”

“Could you show me? I have an awful problem finding things that fit as well as your stuff does.”

“Yeah, I’m lucky I guess, I have a female phenotype.”

“A female what?”

“Phenotype–body type, I’m AIS, so didn’t have a male puberty.”

“AIS, what’s that?”

“Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.”

“Ah, good old testosterone.”

“Not much good about it if you’re a woman–unless you fancy having hairy boobs.”

“Um–no thanks.”

We turned off the motorway and down the A34.

“So what else did your mum teach you?”

“How to knit, embroider my name in my gym kit, the basics of cooking and cleaning. How to wash things by hand or use the machine, how to iron my own clothes–you know the usual.”

The usual? Gee whizz, Cathy, she treated you like a daughter. No mother teaches her son all that.”

“Mine did–so when I went away to university or got my own place, I could cope and not have to bring everything home to her.”

“What about knitting? She didn’t teach you that so you could make your own sweaters, surely?”

“No, that was a bit of a punishment.”

“Like petticoat punishment?”

“No, I came home one day when I was about twelve and had completely destroyed a jumper she’d knitted for me. She was so cross, she made me unravel it and re knit it myself.”

“What did your dad say?”

“He agreed with her, he was sick of holes in my clothes and things.”

“I don’t remember seeing you playing football in the playground?”

“I didn’t, but I got bullied, pushed over, fell off my bike, that sort of thing.”

“So he was happy to see you learning to sew and knit like a daughter.”

“No he wasn’t happy, but he saw it as punishing me for being careless with my clothes, especially my school uniform. There was one occasion when he was happy about it, or shall we say he became happy about it.”

“When was that?”

“My mum took a tumble and hurt her hand and arm, and he had a pair of trousers he needed taking up. He was going away for a conference thing and had bought two pairs of trousers to use with a sports jacket, they were a couple of inches too long.”

“And you took them up for him?”

“Yeah, I’d shortened a pair of my own jeans with my mum’s help, so I’d sort of done it before, and I’d hemmed one of her skirts when it came undone–just for practice she said–it was pleated, took me a couple of hours–but it did improve my technique.”

“I’ll bet.”

“So I came home from school one Friday evening to see my mother with her right arm in a sling. I had to cook the dinner and clear up, then my mother told me what I’d be doing over the weekend.”

“Taking up your dad’s trousers?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Did it make you feel like a girl, doing a little job for her daddy?”

“No it bloody well didn’t. He taunted me, told me at last a chance to show my girly skills. I so very nearly didn’t do it.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“He told me if I didn’t, he’d send me to school in a dress on the Monday.”

“But that’s...”

“Abuse.”

“Yeah–but weren’t you secretly pleased.”

“No, at that point I hated his guts, and that was when I started refusing to have my hair cut.”

“Cor, my heroine.”

“Eh?”

“Well I used to see you with your long ponytail and felt so jealous. Mind you, so did half the girls according to my sister. They used to call you Charlotte and refer to you in the female pronoun.”

“Siá¢n didn’t say anything about that?”

“You knew Siá¢n?”

“I still do, she’s a GP in Salisbury.”

“I used to dream about her, I fancied her so much.”

“She’s lesbian.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

That took me a moment to deal with. We were soon at Eastleigh and then in no time we were at the house.

“You don’t live here?”

“Yes, why else would I drive in here.”

“Bloody Nora, it’s like a bloody castle.”

“No, it’s like a sixteenth century manor house which became a large farmhouse, which became our house. C’mon in, I’ll introduce you to the members of the family who aren’t at work or school.”