Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 2715

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The Daily Dormouse.
(aka Bike, est. 2007)
Part 2715
by Angharad

Copyright© 2015 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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He was gone by the time I woke, I’m sure he doesn’t get enough sleep. Sammi had gone with him, so the only ones I had to talk to about my talk were Daddy, Stella, Julie who dashed off to work with Phoebe, Jacquie and David. Danielle dashed off to see Cindy again and asked if they came back could she stay for dinner? I told her to make sure she told David if we had extras. They all thought it was a good idea if I had time and agreed with me that at short notice, I was likely to have a smaller audience.

I went to check my computer and waiting for me was a huge file from Alan which despite supposed superfast broadband, took quite a while to download. In fact I had time to make a quick cuppa while it did so. I then sat and watched the outtakes making myself cringe. I have decided that doing talks based upon my mistakes must either prove I’m some sort of masochist or comedian or perhaps a teacher—nah, I’ll never be one of those and turn into some crusty old professor—not my style, besides I’m too dumb.

Trish sat and watched them with me. She thought they were hilarious, especially when the mice escaped. The one of me grabbing Bramble as she snuck into the greenhouse also made her laugh out loud. “That cat is one determined critter,” I said.

“Huh, you usually call her worse than that, Mummy.”

We watched the one with the helicopter hovering overhead which it did for minutes and it disturbed the harvest mice quite a lot. I knew what it was and it disturbed me—bloody police. Mind you if they’re flying to help me or mine, that’s different, naturally. Don’t we all think that? My problems take priority over everyone else’s. Sadly, that seems to be the case today and I find many people much more selfish, ruder and aggressive than I remember them even ten years ago. Is it simply because there are so many more of us living in relatively confined spaces—certainly rats that are overcrowded become more aggressive and will even kill each other—not that we should attach too much credit to other species, even ones which are as prolific as we are, so are therefore equally successful.

I saw in the paper of some woman who branded her daughter’s face with a hot cigarette lighter. The child was sixteen months old, about Lizzie’s age. How could someone do that? But then how could anyone deliberately hurt a child—they do. There were reports of the young US aid worker who was taken as a hostage was regularly sexually abused by some of the Isil hierarchy, and that thousands of women and girls have been raped or abused by their fighters, which the leaders condone.

Even in the rampages by French or Allied soldiers during the Napoleonic wars, if the commanders found out about it, soldiers were flogged or hanged. Rape is never condoned by professional armies even though they know it happens as wars brutalise everyone. A young medical student in Japan watched with incredulity as captured American aircrews were used as guinea pigs in nonsense experiments. He made copious notes and after the war wrote a book about it. Very few of the doctors who deliberately maimed and killed these prisoners of war were taken to task about it. It wasn’t a priority unlike the Nazi perpetrators who are still being brought to trial seventy years later.

I copied the files to a DVD and checked it had recorded them, then put that safely into a cover having labelled both it and the case. I then put it into my laptop bag. That was ready and I’d use some of the outtakes of both films to entertain or bore the wildlife trust members—serve them right for inviting me.

“May I come with you when you do your talk, Mummy?”

I looked at her in what must have been close to astonishment. “But you’ve seen all the clips, won’t you find it boring?”

“No, I seen all the clips with your dormouse talk but still liked listening to you talk about them.”

“You saw not seen,” I corrected.

“I didn’t saw nothing.”

“You said you seen all the clips.”

“Yeah, I did see them all.”

“But you should have said, you had seen them or you saw them, not seen them.”

She looked perplexed. “But I seen them.”

“No, Trish, you saw them or had seen them.”

“Forget it, I’ll stay home,” she said and stormed out of the room muttering under her breath. Some teacher I am. I felt like cancelling the talk just in case I had the same effect on everyone, either that, or simply avoid correcting anyone’s grammar—or just correcting them. I could imagine a scenario where someone said they’d seen a dormouse in an impossible situation—such as walking into a teashop in Devon. I wouldn’t have believed it had there not been confirmation from several sources, including the zoo which fostered it. I believe it ended up in Chester, should have come to us, we’re closer—but there you are. If someone told me on Monday that had happened to them, I’d be convinced they were mistaken, but it has happened. I wonder if it was going there for a slice of fruit cake or a walnut one. For one crazy moment, I imagined a dormouse entering a teashop and asking for a slice of cherry cake or fruit flan. I was obviously losing the plot somewhat, I must be, as it would have asked for some bread and Nutella.

I thought I heard the doorbell go but continued with my musings, then when the urge to grab another cuppa arose I passed a ripped jiffy bag with my name on it. What was going on? I took into the kitchen where most of the children were and asked if anyone knew what it was about. They didn’t.

From the dent in the bag it looked as if a book had been delivered in it except I couldn’t remember what I might have ordered. I went back to the computer and called up my emails. Usually if I’ve ordered anything I get a confirmatory email saying the order has been accepted and often one saying it’s been despatched.

Finally after ten minutes of searching, I found it. I’d ordered Jim Al Khalili’s book on quantum biology. I know Daddy hadn’t borrowed it because he wouldn’t open a package addressed to me unless I asked him to. None of the others have any interest in Quantum Mechanics except a certain young lady who might be feeling miffed at me.

Creeping up the stairs I saw her lying on her bed reading my new book. I walked into her bedroom and she looked up and said, “This is really good, Mummy, you should read it.”

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Comments

Hope she can get Trish

to go with her. A little bonding time and a chance to see that Mom is well appreciated would be good for Trish (and for Cathy).

Has Cathy been hacked?

Rhona McCloud's picture

The thought of Trish with credit card access is mind-boggling!

Rhona McCloud

Just go with it.

Trish is a unique young lady.

I was with a bunch of blind people today and we were Kayaking. One of the guys got way off by himself despite admonishment not to do that. When I asked one of the other helpers, she simply said, "That's AJ and he just does as he wishes". :)

I found your stories about 4

I found your stories about 4 months ago. I have found them very enternaining thus far. However, I am cu rous as to why you tend to include words, phrases, etc., that require your readers to pause to look up what you are talking about. I have an IQ of 138 and still I find myself, at times, having to pause your story to look up a reference you have alluded to. I realize that part of this is the difference between the British version of the English language and the American version, but I still find that some of your passages could be more entertaining to your readers if they were more straight forward.
I am the son (daughter) of an 'American English' teacher and I find some of your references to be somewhat obscure. Please do not take offense to this, I simply wish to indicate that some of your readers would enjoy your stories more if they did not have to pause to think about or look up historical, geographical or philosophical inferences in your writings.
I do not wish to cast aspersions. I do truly love to read your stories.
Sincerely yours,
Willow

willow

Depends on what ones needs are

I for one am glad Ang is not dumbing down her phrasing. FWIW, there are all sorts of IQ and having a higher one is no guarantee of having the knowledge in the first place, just possibly more capable of learning it.

Idioms

I for one am glad that Ang doesn't try to change her style - I find her usage to be one of the charms of this ongoing story. There is a whole world outside of the United States of America and Ang amptly illustrates what could be considered by some to be 'proper' English. To try to 'Americanise' this would, in my humble opinion, a tragedy. The entire flavour of the story would be lost.

As regards IQ, then this is already a 'measure' more than 100 years old. I myself have had test results that are strange - I scored 201 on 1, 168 on another, 175 on a third. And yet there are still things I cannot do. And I am smart enough to know that I cannot do them.

Intelligence does not equate to smartness!

I'm sorry that some of the references don't come easily to you, but I for one enjoy them as is, and wouldn't want Angharad to change.

All the best

Julia.

The British Version of English is the More Complex

Dear Willow,

of course you will find the version of English, or rather, the American you have learned a wee bit difficult to try to follow our English. You have to understand, that the British evolved the language that is now accepted world wide as the language for all international communications and for reporting of scientific advances, over several hundreds of years, during which the original Anglo-Saxon has absorbed words and grammatical constructions from Latin, Classical Greek, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese, German, the Scandinavian languages, the Slavic languages, Celtic a.k.a Gaelic tongues, from the various tribes that were part of our once great British Empire, the largest that the world has ever seen and ever will see, since the age of empires is now over. We have even obscure words from Chinese, Japanese, S. Asian Indian peoples and the extinct tongues used by educated elites from former civilizations in those parts. Via the mind-viruses people call religions we have adopted words from ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, and more recently from Arabic and related languages. This process of enriching our language has been gradual and is not to be compared with the rapid adoption and abandoning of slang expressions such as is found in American.

One has also to take note that the population in the USA is composed mainly of peoples from other parts of the world, who have but relatively recently arrived there, as settlers, and refugees from the older cultures from the Old World, who have had to be quickly absorbed into the Main Stream of your culture. This your country has done remarkably well, and that has to be admired, but to do so things have been simplified and made easier to grab a useful grip on the language spoken there. One cannot expect American to be as complex and subtle as British English. You have a Literature that is derived from a couple of hundred years at the very most, and remember the pioneers were far too engaged with conquering the wilderness to be developing any literacy. Our Literature goes back fifteen hundred years at least - the two languages just do not compare.

Apropos IQs, many individuals have high IQs but because they concentrate on learning technologies and sciences, and leave what I have heard called "Bonehead English" in the States, they are hardly literate outside their specialized subject. We are not entirely free of the resulting illiteracy that results from early specialization in education, some of our most eminent scientists have difficulty expressing themselves outside of their specialities. Things have changed a bit since I was at school, over 65 years ago now, but at age 14 I was asked to decide whether I wanted to study the Sciences or the Arts. I wanted to study further both English Literature, Art (drawing and painting) and Physics, Chemistry, Botany and Zoology, I objected to being required to drop subjects I enjoyed. Fortunately for me, because I was glib at arguing my case and had studied examination techniques, and showed promise to eventually win the
First State Scholarship for the School, which would bring it fame and raise its reputation, I persuaded our headmaster to let me do my mix of subjects for the A and S Levels that were used to decide who could go to University. Back then less than 10 % of people went to University. They actually went to the trouble of re-arranging the timetable for lessons just for me !

I remember coming from dissecting a rabbit in Zoology (which back then was oriented towards preparing students for Medical School), rushing from one end of the school building to the opposite end, and arriving with my blood-stained white lab-coat still on, to attend a lesson on the Metaphysical Poets. The Mistress that taught this class cried "All this blood and guts will coarsen your sensibility!" as the rest of the class expressed horror at seeing my red-stained lab coat. I was able to show fellow students that learning the internal structure of an animal gave me a more enlightend knowledge for drawing that animal in Art, and that understanding the biology and chemistry of humans helped me understand the way couples related with each other better, whilst in my science classes I could write up the reports on my chemistry experiment in proper English, and could draw my dissections much better with a proper understanding of perspectives learned in Art ! I argued that Leonardo da Vinci learned to do both so why not us nowadays !

The School got its first State Scholarship and its recruited scholars grew in numbers and quality as a result. It did not help me that much though - at Uni I soon discovered that the money from a State Scholarship, unlike a County Major Award, took most of the first term to come through, and it was not means tested like the County awards were. I had to work in a restaurant at night washing up the plates and saucepans, to cover my costs, and I lived for some time in a Squat.

My parents were poor, my Father was invalided out of the army at the end of WW2 and my Mother only earned a little money cleaning rich peoples' houses for them. I never had brand new clothes to wear until the Grammar School Uniforms we HAD TO wear, and these were bought too big and worn until after they had become too small.

IQs are not everything - I too had a very high score in them, but I have done many silly things in my life since then, and even these days I still do things that are not helping me. I am afraid I care about other people too much.

Dear Willow, I think you could see from the high Kudos counts that our lovely Angharad has had in the longest tale on the BCTS site, that most of us, on either side of 'The Pond', do NOT find her language too hard to understand. So I suggest, with respect, that the problem lies within you and not elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Briar

I suppose the

same argument could be used against many stories that are published here on this marvellous site, But we as readers accept the authors right to describe anything as they see fit Thing is though there is also something called google which it only takes a second to access which in most cases will explain everything , I also doubt if you asked around there would be any regular readers who would want Angharad to change anything about her stories and the way she chooses to tell them ... As someone once said (probably !) "if it ain't broke why fix it "

Kirri

Sneakily

Ang sneaked in 'snuck'.

For me they are like finding an Easter egg in the story

Julia Miller's picture

I always enjoy it when Angharad uses some word I haven’t heard of. For me it’s the joy of discovering something I hadn’t known before, and it’s so easy to highlight a word to define it.

I expect books

are the one item Trish can get by with ordering using Cathy's account.

She is going to have to have her own bookshelf eventually.

I wonder, did Cathy order the

I wonder, did Cathy order the book, or did a certain junior Miss go behind her back and order it on Cathy's credit card for herself? I say this because Trish would generally be the only one in the family reading the type of book it is.

Ah, Quantum Biology

I managed to watch the BBC programme in which Jim Al Khallili tried to explain how this new version of Biology works.

I think I understood about how a robin's eye is the reason for it's navigational skills. If you are interested here is a you tube link to the robin's eye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8aWU5-j2BE

Thanks for keeping your tale going, Angharad

Love to all

Anne G.