Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 2597

Printer-friendly version
The Daily Dormouse.
(aka Bike, est. 2007)
Part 2597
by Angharad

Copyright© 2015 Angharad

  
-Dormouse-001.jpg

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.
@@@@@

I let Trish contemplate on our conversation for half an hour or so then made it obvious I wasn’t working at my desk. I know she hadn’t been doing her homework just holding the book while she thought about something else. She noticed me watching her and she stood and came over to me at my desk.

“I’m sorry, Mummy, I didn’t mean to be rude and embarrass you. I’ll try my hardest not to do it again. I love you, Mummy.” She then started to sniff and tears formed and ran down her cheeks.

I opened my arms and she virtually flung herself into them and I wrapped her in a monster hug. “What am I going to do with you, Missy?” I said quietly kissing her on the top of her head.

“I don’t know,” she sobbed into my chest. “Please don’t send me away.”

“Trish, you are my daughter, when you came to live with us I promised never to send you away. I haven’t changed my mind—I will never send you or any of my children away, unless they want me to.” I said this slowly but firmly so it was unequivocal. “I love you all, and you all have a home here with me as long as you wish. That was and still is my promise to you all.”

“Thank you, Mummy.”

We hugged for several more minutes and at one point I think she almost went to sleep standing up while I hugged her. She was too big to sit on my lap for very long so I didn’t invite her to.

David called us to dinner and I sent her to wash her tear stained face before we went to eat. It was still obvious that she’d been crying but no one mentioned it, I presumed because they thought they knew what had happened.

The girls were excited that there was to be a solar eclipse the next day and that the school was going to allow them to watch it from the playground using special coloured plastic to protect their eyes—even a few seconds of staring at the sun can damage the retina—the screen at the back of the eye. I decided I’d stay with them or at least hang around until they came out to watch the celestial event without telling them. I checked with Sister Maria and she seemed pleased I’d be there, another adult to supervise the girls and try to stop them watching it without eye protection.

At ten past nine the girls started entering the yard lining up at the side which offered the best views of the eclipse. It had already started though not much was visible through the cloud except a slight unseasonable darkening of the day. They interspersed older and younger girls, the older girls were asked to make themselves responsible for two or three younger ones to make sure they used the special glasses.

My girls saw me and waved but stayed in their classes. I spent my time watching for little ones not wearing their protection and pointed them out to the older girls who dealt with it.

By nine twenty the light was fading though not as dark as it was in 1999 when it went as dark as late evening. The cloud thinned rather than broke but we saw some of the ring of light around the moon. We couldn’t see the bead of light as they begin to move apart due to a thicker mass of cloud. Then the cloud thinned again and a crescent of light formed which we watched and photographed mainly with mobile phones. Another bank of cloud pushed in and the event was curtained from us. Sister Maria gave the instruction and the girls began filing back into school.

“Thank you for helping, Lady Cameron.”

“My pleasure.”

“Your girls didn’t rush over to you—I’m impressed.”

“I presume they were told to stay in class lines.”

“They were but I didn’t expect them to do it.”

“We were both impressed then.”

I took my leave and drove to work. Apparently hardly anyone did anything until the eclipse was over, so I hadn’t missed much—it was cloudy there too—so I really didn’t miss much.

For the next hour Delia and I slogged our way through my correspondence and other paperwork. Then, after a cuppa, we dealt with the meeting of the council I would chair next week. We were still lacking a vice chancellor, a new one as yet unselected. I was appalled at the salary on offer, two hundred and sixty thousand pounds. My own was significantly less, a modest eighty thousand if I stayed in post for the year, much of which went in tax. I wasn’t complaining, to pay it one must earn it and with my bank based income I was well over the basic rate level.

In the afternoon I did a refresher lecture on cell division—not my specialty—but one I’ve done for a few years now. I then went on to deal with some bio-chemistry before finishing with a quick flit through the fundamentals of ecology.

When I’d finished several students came up to thank me as they now understood the citric acid cycle, or meiosis and so on. A couple actually said they wished I’d taught them in the first place as I’d made it so much more understandable. I suspect I got a bit of insight into how Professor Brian Cox must feel after he’s done one of his television specials and receives feedback from viewers. It was certainly more pleasant than being told it was a waste of time. Part of me missed actually teaching not just doing the odd class—but my time was so busy. I decided I needed an assistant, someone to do some of the detailed planning, but who had a background in university education. I’d do the overall planning, except with ecology, where I’d do the detailed as well and keep a small teaching brief as well, especially fieldwork, and would lead a few fieldtrips myself.

Erin phoned as I returned to my office to remind me to be available for interviews regarding the harvest mouse film at Easter—or on Good Friday to be precise. Delia showed me four requests for interviews, two were phone ones for radio, one was on ‘Start the Week’ for Monday week where I’d have to go to Bristol to take part in the programme, the other was a television breakfast show on BBC. That meant going to London so I wasn’t as enthusiastic. Both would pay expenses and a fee of a hundred pounds. I knew I could justify the time involved away from college because the university benefits from the publicity of one of its departmental heads narrating and directing the programme. It tends to up recruitment figures, as I insist my name and the university are titled as I come into view on the film ie Professor Cathy Watts, Portsmouth University.

I finished my call and went off to collect the girls from school. When I arrived there, as I walked to find them my Black Berry peeped and on opening the email discovered some teenager had filmed a pine marten in Cornwall. To say I was taken aback would be an understatement—there are no records of one in the county for about a hundred years. Had it been taken from somewhere else or had it found its own way there? The former seemed most likely but without a DNA test, which population it belonged to would be speculative.

05Dolce_Red_l_0.jpg

up
243 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

Another Cliff Hanger

littlerocksilver's picture

Where did that pine martin come from? There's a wolverine in central California that came all the way from the Rockies, across hundreds of miles of high desert. There's a term for it that I can't remember at the moment e.g. salmon don't always return to the stream where they were born.

Portia

Trish is a kid

They do dumb things and do them again. Parents need patience and love. Wish Trish (and Cathy) could get over their insecurities.

Krebs cycle for the win!

I was taught the eponymous form of the citric acid cycle when I took high school biology in the states. I also very pointedly gave my bio teacher a newspaper article about the sry variant. It was one of the earliest reports that was starting to debunk the whole XX and XY female/male thing as absolutes.

ATP is a great thing. BTW part of lesser endurance as we age is due to fewer mitochondria but that means we have to exercise to make sure they keep up their numbers.

Here is hoping that Trish

Here is hoping that Trish lives up to her word. As she is still a child, I can't see that truly happening for several more years. Wonder if the pine marten and/or the wolverine were actually caught or found as babies, taken from their native habitat and the got too big or mean, (in the case of the wolverine), then dumped off somewhere near where they have been spotted. This actually happens a lot more often than is realized, and especially so with alligators, snakes, cats and even dogs. Just check the Everglades in Florida regarding the snakes. Constrictors that are not from this country, rather the wilds of Asia, Africa and SE Asia. Alligators found in swimming pools or backyards in towns no where near the region of the US that alligators come from. Or you can still find monkeys and peacocks roaming around freely, that are not native to the local they are found in. In the words of "Mr. T", "I pity the fool" that Cathy finds has dumped the pine marten rather than a) leaving it alone as should have been done initially. b) left the animal to fend for itself in a very strange and alien environment to that which it is most familiar with, thus giving a higher cause of potential death before adapting to their current environment. Janice Lynn

The eclipse ...

... in our neck of the woods wasn't spectacular but the thin cloud cover made it safe to watch without protection so it was still interesting to see. The one in 1999 was better. It happened on a Wednesday which meant we were out on the weekly bike ride. I'd even taken my lights with me as I had no idea just how dark it would get. It didn't get that dark and we watched it reflected in a lane-side puddle.

If Ang lets us know when Cathy will be on Start the Week I'll make sure to listen :)

Thanks for my bed-time read :)

Robi

I actually managed

to forget the eclipse until it was actually happening , By then of course it was far too late to get myself in any sort of position to watch it ,Typical me i guess always full of good intentions .... Then i get sidetracked!

Kirri

Grockles in Cornwall †

Rhona McCloud's picture

I can believe the pine marten in Cornwall as an academic friend years ago had a porcupine in the house which they'd caught in a West Country plantation (it was very friendly but chewed through the skirting board and telephone cable). Every time Cathy goes into the countryside I half expect her to come back with some exotic wildlife.

Grockle is the Cornish word for foreigner which is anyone from across the River Tamar

Rhona McCloud

We be gettin'

Angharad's picture

grockles in Darzit too (but no pine martens so far). I've submitted three records of polecats to the Mammal Society - all road kills - from Dorset. They shouldn't really be here but it's suspected someone helped their migration a few years ago. It would be nice to see these attractive little predators expanding this way especially as they appear to affect grey squirrel numbers according to an Irish study,(see, I can do science too) but I'm not holding my breath.

Angharad

I live around Washington DC

The grockle problem here will start to get really bad soon. I am amazed there is any wildlife at all sometimes around the monument area considering the level of grockle infestation.

Wow...

Salaries for professors is much better in the UK than over here, unless I've mucked up the exchange rate! Wow... They might even tempt my wife to teach over there for that kind of money. LOL (I wonder why Cathy thinks Harvard pays THAT much more, if she'd be making more at Bristol...)

I'm wondering if the kids are beginning to learn something - given they didn't rush Cathy as she helped with the Eclipse observations.

Thanks,
Annette