(aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2741 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.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, in the room just up from my office I have my secretary supervising my daughter who is pretending to be doing a project on trees being taught by a student of mine who freezes whenever I have him in for a tutorial. According to Diane they’re both doing really well and brainbox is apparently drawing him out quite well by asking intelligent questions. They’re scheduled to be an hour, I’ll gatecrash after forty minutes or so. I have a couple of letters to do before then, one of which is to the Rev Pilbeam, who is a complete lunatic.
He claims to have harvest mice living in his loft because they’re eating his wiring and leaving lots of grain about. I got someone from his local university to visit but alas the old duffer was out for the day but his wife let my colleague into the house and he went up into the attic to see what was happening.
A bit of background: the reverend gentleman is about a hundred and fifty and writes to me quite regularly with outlandish sightings. One of these days I expect to get a confirmed sighting of the tooth fairy or Father Christmas. He’s always seeing big cats in or near his garden, of the lion and tiger varieties, he sends me photographs which are useless, they’re blurred or out of focus and could be anything.
I got a report from my colleague and it turns out he has something up in his attic—an edible dormouse. He resides near Tring which is where they escaped from Baron Rothschild’s collection and appear to have spread slightly in recent years. He hasn’t yet managed to catch the intruder but saw it dash off into the cavity wall. He’s left some baited traps so may yet catch it. I’m not quite sure what you do with a species like Glis glis because being an alien, they may not be released into the wild in this country, at the same time I don’t think you can kill them.
The edible dormouse is larger by some amount than the hazel dormouse and will readily spread into homes and gardens, where like many rodents it does damage to anything it can chew upon. Rodents have continually growing front teeth and need to chew on things to keep them down. What it is they chew on seems quite arbitrary and electrical cables are quite attractive for some reason. The outcome can be fatal if the animal chews on live wires and sadly it might not just be the sad rodent who is a victim—damaged wiring can get hot and spontaneously ignite, thereby burning down someone’s house or badly damaging one. I spoke to dozens of fire brigades a couple of years ago and discovered such misfortunes happen in one or two houses in this country at this current time.
For two weeks after all this happened we had all sorts of weirdo asking for advice about the widespread problem of global domination by these little animals. We’re not allowed to say or do anything which might constitute advice—we could be sued if anything went wrong, not to mention someone getting hurt.
Anyway, I’ve written to the old looney suggesting he may have bats in the belfry and edible dormeece in his attic. My colleague was going back tomorrow to see if he’d caught anything. By the time they get this they should have been back and confirmed what they believe is inhabiting his loft and eating his cables.
It’s okay for me to laugh at him because it’s not my house they’re trashing. However, the old fool has been writing to me ever since we started the survey three years ago. Goodness has it been that long—yes it has and some days feels like very much longer.
Trish had been playing with Graham’s brains for about forty five minutes when I decided to intervene and see what had been happening. Diane seemed to think they were both doing well. I have to take Trish back to school but we need to have both of them evaluate how they felt it went this morning. The school were happy for her to have an hour off because for her homework she has to write a report on what she felt had happened.
We’d filmed a short sequence to show both of them what actually happened and it demonstrated that Graham could explain things in some detail. It showed he understood the mechanisms in play and the theory. So why wasn’t he able to tell me? He was too nervous and now we’d been able to demonstrate he could, he’d have no excuse for not doing so.
Trish showed she could ask intelligent questions even for something that didn’t exist such as her supposed project. Graham was much taken with her and the fact that she fooled him completely. Once he realised who she was, viz my daughter, I allowed her to talk to him about quantum. He stayed with her for about five minutes before she elaborated into the realms of particle physics and lost everybody.
Did I tell you she wrote to Professor Brian Cox saying she admired his programmes but that the following matter had puzzled her. She then explained what her problem was and said who she was, including my daughter. He wrote back pointing out where she’d made a slight mistake and hoped once she resolved that it should make sense. He didn’t patronise her and she read his response with great enthusiasm telling everyone what a nice man he was.
She had made a small error and once she saw it she managed to complete her calculation. I had no idea what either of them were on about. When he realised she was my daughter he said he’d enjoyed both my films—what a nice man.
The upshot is that she’s now thinking about applying to Manchester instead of Oxford, to read particle physics under a certain Professor Brian Cox. Mind you, by next week she’ll be wanting to do something else. This changing of minds in children is of course why it’s so difficult to treat transgender children, because this week they’ll convince you they want to be one thing and the next they want to be something else—and one of the reasons I didn’t want to become too involved with Charlotte and her mother.
My transgender children haven’t had much chance to change their minds because their bodies got switched before they would normally have been allowed to do so for reasons beyond their control, with Trish and Danielle being especially sudden and dramatic. Fortunately, so far they seem to have had positive outcomes. I’m still concerned about the long term effects on Danielle, but while she has an England cap as an ambition, she seems relatively happy in her new role. Trish, well she’s just Trish and I’ve never seen her as Patrick except for that short period when she banged her head on the apple tree and suffered amnesia.
Comments
Trish and the older man
Is this a sign of things to come? Not only does she manipulate a post grad, presumably in his twenties, but she has also set out to seduce Prof Brian Cox who is a venerable 47. At her age I had to make do with Desmond Morris in black and white in Zoo Time.
Rhona McCloud
I remember Zoo Time
and Desmond Morris of Naked Ape and Human Zoo fame, I also read his books on Cat Watching and Man Watching. He's also a respected artist.
Angharad
i was
more of a Jonny Morris girl myself, even got to meet him once.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Beat me to it
As a kid, I used to get confused between Zoo Time, Zoo Quest and Animal Magic.
I think I have my Morrises sorted now, though!
Yankee wirin'
I've had UK wiring explained to me before and find no fault in it.
Here across the pond, the wire is run in the attic, the walls and under the house using what we call "romex", a two conductor cable where one conductor is at "Ground" potential and the other is the "hot" conductor that is usually at either 120 VAC or 240 VAC, depending. Here in the Northwest, Squirrels are a huge problem, eating the insulation off long runs of the wire. Supposedly there is paper wrapping inside the outer jacket that is impregnated with rat poison, but I have never found a dead rodent at the site of any of these dining locations.
We are lucky here in the US because almost all construction is wood with gypsum board inside. One time I had to remove about 30 feet of this board to remove the wiring and install new conductors. The next thing we did was block up all the holes in his house that would admit squirrels.
A Welshwoman we both know has regaled me with many tales of doing remedial work over there, making me thankful that I am retired. :)
Gwen
House Wiring
Gwen,
Codes vary from place to place. In NYC, it must be getting close to 100 years of a restrictive code. Romex is not legal in NYC, as there are numerous rats. Armored cable (BX), metal conduit, and metal mold are what the law requires.
I agree with the City Fathers' actions. Knawing rodent caused electrical fires are very bad things. All big cities have at least 1 rat for every human resident. :-(
G/R
On changing minds.
I never saw my alternating condition as 'Changing my mind' is seemed more as though my mind was being changed for me by some inexplicable agent somewhere inside my head. I didn't have any control over it and I never recognised or identified any external environmental element that might have triggered the changes. It just sort of happened, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. In the earliest years in Walton it was sometimes quite distressing especially when both the doctors and I were trying to determine the exact nature of the cause or causes of the changes. To this day I'm sure some of them saw it as something whimsical and that I had some sort of control of it; thus they tended to think I was faking it.
Their treatments reflected this and caused me distress. Sadly they inevitably concluded that I was transvestite not transgendered. However, it gives me pause for thought for it explains why they weren't prepared to perform any permanent remedy via surgery. I understand why doctors are still cautious about very early intervention.
So what's the difference between a transvestite and an 'intermittent transsexual'? (I still don't know the answer to that one and I don't suppose I ever will. I don't need to now.
Still lovin' the story Ang. Thanks.
The War Within My Members
Hind sight is not worth the powder that it would take to blow a flea to hell. I'm conflicted sometimes by so many opposing forces that it challenges my peace of mind.
I was never happy as a male, but did not know that was the problem until my late 30's, only to find out much later that I am actually genetically a bit of both. In a warm, nurturing environment, I suppose I could have survived as a very mild, gentle male. OR given my choice, I would have been a somewhat tomboyish female, being an absolute seductress with my husband, and cubish as hell on a motorized dirt bike, horse, or camping, or sailing, or hiking. But when the tent flap dropped, out would come the mynx. :)
In 200 years, perhaps gender won't matter at all except for time to punch out and infant.
Gwen
Angharad
It doesn't matter how often you praise Dr Cox in your stories, I somehow suspect he might not succumb to your charms! And 47? He looks about 12!
I found wiring and water
I found wiring and water lines very interesting when I was stationed in Germany in the 1970s. The wiring was at 240-280 volts and was very thick wiring. This wiring and the water lines were buried in the concrete block walls and were supposedly never to fail, because the walls would have to be jackhammered out to get to these items. Saw this in action when our kitchen had the water line break and start leaking through the wall. NOT a fun thing to have happen, especially when the outside wall was part of where the repairs had to be done. This literally left the home open to both the elements and anyone who may have wanted to enter the home uninvited.
Glad Cathy realized so good from her little experiment with Trish and Graham. All three seemed to have a win-win out of this. Trish showing her overall "smarts"; Graham his papers, and Cathy getting what she needed from Graham, plus some quiet time that she desperately seemed to need.
Cathy as any
mother would be is concerned about her children, Not sure though if she has too much too worry about as regards Danni, After her initial problems Danni seems to have settled down really well ... Lets hope it stays that way .
Kirri
Cathy as any
mother would be is concerned about her children, Not sure though if she has too much too worry about as regards Danni, After her initial problems Danni seems to have settled down really well ... Lets hope it stays that way .
Kirri