Worming Dumfries (aka Bike) Part 603 by Angharad

The journey home was slow and boring, and I grumbled at the temporary traffic lights at the road works. Why they have to dig these roads up while I’m using them, is a question many drivers have asked yet never had a sensible answer.

It’s like, why did the chicken cross the road? Why did they dig holes in the road? Just for fun, seemed as good an answer as any, and somebody tooting me from behind brought me back from my reverie as the lights had turned green. A little while later, another set of temporary traffic lights and more fresh holes in the road. Why can’t they install sewers on days when I’m not going that way? Maybe I should have asked them.

I listened to the radio; the death toll in the Italian earthquake was mounting. It sounded awful, the reports from the stricken area–didn’t they have any cats? They can apparently detect earthquakes hours before anything else, maybe I should get one–a cat, not an earthquake.

I presume it’s due to cat’s phenomenal hearing, they can hear minute squeaks and rustles from their prey animals, and also the tiniest of noises from the vibration of earth movements. Mind you, the way they used to throw black cats onto bonfires, maybe they don’t have any left in Italy to warn them, or is it a case of the cats striking back?

As I drove into our property, I mused on dormice getting their own back on humans–again it’s mainly in Italy that they eat the poor things, and that’s a different species to my breeding colony. Italy–maybe the dormice caused the earthquake, all jumping up and down at the same time. The absurdity of the image of thousands of dormice jumping up and down to cause an earthquake made me laugh out loud. Punishment for eating our families, was the moral of the story.

Mind you, if that was the case, imagine the consequences of millions of cattle and sheep doing the same for the rest of us–this little island would disappear all together–although we have five hundred or more earth tremors every year in the UK. Just goes to prove we Brits aren’t without faults. I chuckled to myself as I let myself in.

“Mummmmm–eeeeee,” screamed the smaller banshee as it wrapped itself around my legs, soon followed by a larger, but equally noisy one.

“Did you behave for Gramps?”

They both nodded and Mima even said, “Yes, Mummy, I was good. Gwamps said I was, a angew.”

“Angel,” Trish translated for me.

“Ah, but of course you were, you take after me.”

“What? the Angel of Dormice?” suggested Tom as he appeared behind the girls.

“Hello, Daddy,” I said pecking him on the cheek, “Were they good?”

“Of course, unlike you, they usually do what I tell them.”

I pouted and the girls giggled. “I’m a good girl, too,” I protested, pretending to cry.

“Yes, sure ye are, I don’t think. Oh, Dr Rose phoned, can you call him back?” he handed me a slip of paper. It was a mobile number.

I gave the girls a small apple each as a reward for being good and went off to call Sam Rose. I dialled and he answered after a couple of rings. “Dr Rose.”

“Hello, Sam, it’s Cathy Watts.”

“Hello, Lady C, how are you?”

“I’m fine and you?”

“Well, thank you. Look, I have another shrink for your little girl.”

“Brilliant, no more Dr Fliss, I hope?”

“Goodness no, she’s up to her eyeballs in complaints and investigations by the GMC and College of Psychiatrists. She’ll be struck off for sure, if not worse.”

“Worse?” For a professional, I thought being struck off was as bad as it got.

“Yes, the police are investigating, there are rumours she hit more than one patient.”

“Oops! Oh well she’ll deserve everything she gets.”

“Indeed. Now the new one is Dr Karen Nicholson. I’m having lunch with her tomorrow, could you join us?”

“That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it?” well, I thought it was.

“A little but then, so are you. We’re meeting at…” I took down the details and asked Tom if he could cope with the girls while I went gadding off tomorrow. He agreed without hearing where or why. But then, he knew I’d been talking to Dr Rose.

I went to sort out lunch, a boiled egg with toast soldiers for the girls and for the adults, the same without the military overtones. The girls went to play outside with their prams and dollies while I cleared up in the kitchen.

“It’s somebody’s birthday soon,” I mentioned to Tom.

“Aye, she keeps telling me.”

“Saturday, which I suppose is better than Good Friday.”

“Aye, I suppose.”

“I’d like to have given her a party, but she doesn’t seem to have many friends yet, I suppose we could do one with just us, especially if Simon could get home.”

“Ye could, or we could take a trip to say, Paulton’s Park.”

“Hey, that’s a brilliant idea, Daddy. I can see why you’re a professor.” I hugged him.

“Less of the sarcasm, lassie, because ye’re still no too big to go across my knee.”

I decided that simply looking shocked was enough of a response, rather than challenging him to prove it. If he had succeeded without having another heart attack, this would have become a porn story instead of the biography of an innocent.

“I’d like to get Trish, something nice for her birthday, especially as it’s the first one with us. I’ll get her a new pair of pyjamas and slippers from Mima, and maybe I’ll buy her a one of these electronic pocket games all the kids have today. They do them in pink, which should be suitably girlish for her.”

“Whit aboot a mobile phone?”

“She’s only five, Daddy.”

“I know that, but they all seem to hae them these days. I wonder how we survived wi’oot them?”

“We spoke to each other. Most kids send texts and make calls to the kid standing next to them.”

“Whilst micro-waving their brain?”

“Something like that.” I had read a bit of the research and it was at best inconclusive about the harmful effects of microwave radiation from mobile phones. However, it meant I didn’t want my two to have them for now, if not much longer.

“Mebbe I’ll buy her a cross and chain,” said Tom.

“She’d probably like that, although I’m not sure about the religious symbolism.”

“Ach, yer a pain in the arse, so ye are, with yer anti-religiosity. Yer worse than the bloody taliban.”

“That’s me, an immoderate moderate agnostic, militant wing.”

“A provo agnostic?”

“If you like, though comparing me to Irish bandits, is a bit OTT.”

“I thought that was the Tory party.”

“What, Irish bandits?”

“Aye, apparently, the name Tory related to such groups.”

“Goodness, nothing new there then. I think upon reflection, I’d be a Whig.”

“Weren’t they amongst all those puritans who went over to the States?”

“Probably, they’re straight laced enough aren’t they?”

“Dinna let them hear ye say it though, or yer visa application ‘ll be denied.”

“Don’t think they have dormice in the US, anyway,” I said in a sour grapes tone, which made him laugh.

“Aye, I think yer richt, but when I take the girls to Florida, you’ll hae to bide at hame and feed Kiki.”

“Daddy, I’m into dormice, not Mickey Mouse.”