The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3436 by Angharad Copyright© 2024 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 felt quite pleased with myself; now if I can get Melinda to go on maternity leave and have Delia to cover for her my job would be very much easier, and if I could find a reliable housekeeper that David doesn't fall for (that means anything in skirts), my life could be much easier and I know Simon would fund it, but if push came to shove I'd fund it myself. I'm lucky that the bank will deal with all the admin over pensions and sick pay and will deduct tax and national insurance as well as superannuation or pension stuff to you and me. Simon would set it all up and one of our accountancy clerks would deal with the rest. They already run payroll services for several customers so they are quite used to it. For those selling goods or services they'll even deal with the dreaded VAT so there shouldn't be any embarrassing conversations with HMRC, though they are in the press again for taking too long to answer the phone to enquirers; apparently it worked out at something ridiculous like a twelve year wait for an answer. So the select committee told them to get their act together. I doubt they will, the Tories have cut the civil service to the bone and wonder why they are hated by everyone. It's the same with the NHS, the police and local councils, nothing works anymore or if it does it's a happy coincidence.

Still the moron in Number Ten, that is Downing Street, has decided to call a surprise election. The probability is that they will get stuffed so Tory MPs are declaring they won't stand at the next election in droves. They have been disgusting and corrupt for 14 years, so anyone who votes for them should be shoved in a strait-jacket and dumped in a padded cell for a minimum of five years.

However, there is a rise in the rightwing party, Reform. they are as nasty as the Republicans in the US and have some similar policies, especially aimed at things like migration. Its originator, Nigel Farage, him the liar and general shit stirrer who was partly responsible for Brexit, so it's going to be for Little Englanders and bigoted xenophobes but we seem to have plenty of those in the country. Like the Republicans, most seem to like kicking trans people or gays, so are inherently nasty usually affiliated to some crackpot church, so they have their god's backing which wants to make me laugh. Unfortunately, like Trump, they are absurd but can also be dangerous because they do represent some very sick-minded people who all have guns, especially in the US.

I was involved with a dormouse survey recently and we found four dormice all torpid and three were in nest boxes and one was in a nest tube. The latter was interesting in that dormice nests often have green-leaves woven into the nest, although we don't know why for certain, but the one in the nesting tube looked like it had built its nest of salad. I have never seen so much green stuff in a dormouse nest before. Despite the weather being a bit warmer, it was still largely wet and obviously too cold for these dormice. One of them was in a box which was absolutely full of grass and moss, obviously something like a wren had been there before and built a nest and it was only because I played a hunch and pulled out a large handful of the nesting material we discovered the dormouse had burrowed in and built a nest in all the vegetation the birds had carried in before.

Why I formed the hunch, I don't know, but I've had them before and I suspect it's just down to experience, like doctors make an unexpected diagnosis because they recognise something from a previous case they'd seen of it. It isn't something you can teach because it needs the experience to trigger it, but it showed that I am thinking and not just on autopilot when I am involved in surveys. I hope Delia takes me up on my offer as Melinda's maternity cover.

We have a bank holiday this weekend. It used be known as Whitsunday or Whitsuntide, originally supposed to celebrate or commemorate the Holy Ghost visiting Christ's disciples after his alleged ascension into Heaven. It shows how secular we have got that it's now called Late Spring Bank-holiday as opposed to the early one, which celebrates May Day, when our ancestors used to dance around maypoles. It's pure paganism and associated with fertility cults, or used to be. So how people can get all high and mighty about religion, or more commonly, their religion when it's clearly evident much of it is based on pagan ceremonies or rites including holy communion - fancy eating the body and drinking the blood of your god-king - isn't that cannibalism? But they can't see the absurdity of it because they are blind to it, as most bigots are.

We are into exams as soon as the weekend is over and I'm agreeable to invigilating for the odd exam but am trying to avoid any marking. I feel I've done my share and these days only expect to do marking of PhD scripts and dissertations and those are possibly even worse to mark because they are incredibly in-depth pieces of work and can be incredibly boring to read and you have to read them very closely because you have someone's career in your hands and you want them to succeed. Mind you, I have seen some that you wonder how the author got this far because they don't have much idea of either the hypothesis they are trying to prove or investigate let alone the standard of presentation expected at this level, and we can only allow a certain level of dementia before we have to return the piece of work to its author and tell them it's substandard. Always unpleasant to do and shows some poor mentoring, as a good tutor would pick it up much earlier and try to steer the research in more relevant areas. Oh the joys of higher education.

The lovely warm sunshine of Saturday and the gardening people did gave way to rain before nightfall with some heavy rain forecast, lighter rain tomorrow with the possibility of thunderstorms. We had thunder the other afternoon, it had no effect on Bramble, who continued her psychopathic activities but it did affect Kikki somewhat, she wanted to burrow under Trish's leg. All the animals are attracted to Trish, not sure why, but if she isn't available they sometimes come to me, especially if they are after food, although David is known to give them titbits when he's cooking. I wondered why Kikki was so fond of him, it seems a way to a spaniel's heart, is definitely though its stomach, but then I suspect you knew that anyway. Cats can be very friendly when they want something but decidedly aloof when they don't, except Bramble likes to be with Trish if she's not bashing the local wildlife.

So, earlier the air was alive with the sound of lawnmowers which annoyingly drowned out the sound of bumblebees on a cotoneaster bush we have in the garden. Every year at this time, it literally buzzes with buff-tails and white-tailed bumblebees. It would be easy to just call them Bombus lucorum the white tails but they are mixture of several varieties and are generally recorded as a lucorm complex as the differences are difficult to see even among experts, which I'm not by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm a bit better with aquatic insect larvae from my pond dipping days as a teenager. Nearly everyone thought I was a girl with my long hair and girl's dungarees which Dad bought by accident, he thought they were boy's ones. He'd heard my mother threatening me because I'd worn yet another hole in the knee of my jeans. She made me repair it with a patch from a previous pair I had caught on a barbed wire fence while out birdwatching and tore the seat out of them. They were pretty well irreparable and although Mum was a good seamstress, they were only good enough for chopping up for patches for other pairs, as I was doing now. My sewing was as good as any girl's because she wouldn't let me skimp on it, it had to be perfect. Then I used to grumble, now I thank her, my sewing though mainly basic, usually repairs, is pretty good and often better than lots of places who offer repairs, often cleaners. If it can't be done on a machine, like simple split seams or zips they don't want to know and charge the earth for it.
So I tend to do my own if it's not too complicated, especially things like hems which I was horrified to learn that Stella couldn't repair a simple hem or was she just lazy and relatively cunning, letting muggins do it for her, while she patted my head and watched me wag my tail? I didn't learn because when she needed a hem done I offered again, presumably trying to prove my girliness. Now I can see I might have been just a sucker.

Anyway, those of my girls that I have taught to sew, do it properly. I'm not quite as strict as my mother was with me but I want them to be competent and those who are in school tend to suggest, where they have done any sewing in school, that they are taught much the same way as I was and what I have taught them is correct. It's always nice to have something verified by a supposed expert because I'm certainly not.

Anyway back to my pond dipping days and those dungarees. I wore them for ages and eventually wore the seat out, they were a pain to go to the loo because you almost had to take them off to go, they were rather generous in the bum but then I was starting to grow hips and they didn't look silly, and with my long hair I suppose I did look a bit like a girl, well quite a big bit like one, but it never worried me and I told you that the RSPB young ornithologists were convinced I was a girl, pretending to be a boy or a tomboy. None of the adults thought I was a boy. At first it was embarrassing but after a while I just accepted being called Charley or Charlotte. It didn't ever cause me any real problems and once or twice saved my bacon when other boys tried to bully me for being so girly.

I remember a boy called Neil Smith who used to bully me in junior school and he joined the Young Ornithologists about the same time I did. He tried it on with me, being a bully that is. I had to put up with it in school but on field trips, I didn't. I remember he tried to push me in a stream we were crossing via a plank bridge. It was quite narrow and he pretended to help me cross it, holding his hand out and calling me Charlotte, while making faces which showed it was a trick. He wanted to hold my hand and then push me into the stream. There was no subtlety with Neil, and I spotted it coming and pretended to reach for his hand and then pulled mine away, he overbalanced and fell in. It wasn't deep but he got soaked, and no one seemed to spot the assistance I gave to gravity that day. He swore at me and threatened all sorts of revenge, but after one or two similar episodes he stopped coming out with the RSPB and although he told me he'd get me in school, I managed to avoid him and his pals whenever they planned to teach me a lesson.

I wonder what he's doing now, I had heard he'd joined up so I hoped he was still in one piece, as one boy who bulled me in grammar school, a boy named Tony Parsons lost his legs when he was on patrol in Afghanistan and their Landrover was hit by an IEDn , an army surgeon felt it necessary to amputate. His partner was killed outright, shrapnel hit him in the head, he died instantly. Quite why we were in Helmand I don't know, but he was one of several who were killed or injured out there, for what? We pulled out and it's gone back to its mediaeval form of government, where women are treated so badly. I hate the Taliban who are like animals, bigoted variety and the religion they practice is based on male superiority and subjugation of the female. It's all bilge to hide the fact that all such worshippers are afraid of female sexuality so have to persecute it. They are all animals, pigs to be specific. But I reckon we shouldn't have been there in the first place.