The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3182 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 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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It was coming up half term and I wondered who else might like to have a lesson on riding. I asked them when I served up dinner and it seemed they’d all quite like a go, including Danielle which slightly surprised me. After our repast, Trish asked me how she might recover a bar of chocolate from her trouser pocket. I didn’t smirk or laugh but it was difficult. We soaked them in the end after turning everything inside out and picking off what bits we could—she ate the ones she got off, mine went in the bin

It reminded me of the day I put a paper bag with some cake crumbs in it down for Kiki to lick—she ate the bag as well. But then she is a spaniel, Trish isn’t. I did look again just to make sure.

Monday loomed and I played truant, working from home then taking the mob to the local riding school where for an absolute fortune, they all had an introductory lesson in basic horse riding. While they were engaged with the equestrians I sat in the car and did some work via the internet courtesy of my iPad. Diane sent me some bits and pieces via the web and I dealt with them before Trish worked out how to programme a horse with her smart phone—or worse, everyone else’s horse.

They were all rather pleased with themselves after the session and agreed they could come for a lesson every day of the half term week, for which I negotiated a substantial discount. I was quite pleased that I’d be able to let them learn while I caught up on one or two things via my tablet and phone. I told Diane and she waxed lyrical about how she’d loved horses when she was young. I told her I didn’t think that they had evolved that early. Quite why she huffed and puffed over the phone after that surprised me.

Thinking of evolution reminded me that Darwin did quite a bit about animal feet, suggesting that mammals all had something similar—he was thinking about the bony structure—roughly the same sort of number of bones but arranged very differently and with adaptations like bones fusing together. I’d have to take a look at my stuff on Darwin to see exactly when and what he’d thought about it.

He’d also looked at the embryos of various creatures and seen that many of the vertebrates look similar at the same sort of period of embryonic development which he considered showed our emergence from a common ancestor.

Thinking of Darwin reminded me of Alfred Russel Wallace and his book the Malay Archipelago which I’d long ago intended to read, so I ordered one on line. The next day I had to attend the university for a meeting I couldn’t rearrange and asked David to take the offspring to the stables. So for the first time in ages I drove my Jaguar to work. I’d forgotten what a joy it was to drive compared to the minibus people carrier thing.

Whenever I drive it I get snide comments about being an ecologist driving a petrol guzzler, when I said it was diesel, they went off horrified saying that was even worse due to particulates and so on. I called after them that I’d ride a bike if they did. They didn’t respond which could mean they didn’t hear me or they weren’t going to ride bikes either. Some of it is pure jealousy, I drive a luxury car and they don’t. I really don’t want an electric car until they can do as much mileage as a petrol or diesel car can do on a full tank. If they develop hydrogen cell cars, put me down for one—those I would support.

The media are full of the impending election with gaffes on all sides and given the other upsets in the past year believe anything could happen, though a Greens or Lib-Dem victory looks as far away as a bus trip to mars. They say that Trump will pull the US out of the Paris accord—if he does it show him for the fool he is and the Chinese will take the leading role internationally.

Trish made me smile at the morning meal table when Lizzie muttered something at her and she scolded her saying loudly, “Like Mrs May says, Breakfast means breakfast,” which caused Stella to choke on her muesli. The problem is I don’t know if she’s making jokes or one of her malapropisms. Probably the former but with Trish you never know.

“Tweezah May don’t say that,” offered Meems, “she says Bwexit means Bwexit.”

“Tweezer May?” chided Trish, “You can’t even say her name, so how can you know what she says?”

At this stage I intervened and stopped it ramping up into a full on cat fight.

The rest of the week went on as before with riding being their main activity then if I was available I’d take them home set them some things to do which could be such as tidying their bedroom or doing some gardening for me—weeding the patio tubs or jobs like that. If they made a good job of it they got a reward. Sometimes I set them something educational, asking how we could reduce plastic in our daily lives. Trish suggested we could reduce it by looking through the wrong end of binoculars. One day she’s going to cut herself she is so sharp.

When I got home later that day she had worked out a way for us to minimise any plastic we had in the house by chopping up our bank cards and recycling them. She also said we mustn’t use plastic bags ever again switching to recyclable or renewable natural fibre bags such as hessian or cotton. I tried to point out that growing cotton impoverishes women and it also uses huge amounts of water being a very thirsty crop.

“How does it affect women?”

“In poorer countries they use women to pick it because they generally have smaller, more nimble fingers.”

“Isn’t it better to employ women than a machine like they do in America.”

“It’s not nice work.”

“You say that about being a professor.”

“She just doesn’t like working,” quipped Livvie.

At that point I felt like going back to work because it felt easier than staying home and dealing with loads of dissenting children. They were also wrong, I didn’t mind working when I was doing something I could see a direct value in, like teaching. My work these days is more of a support role than doing the actual teaching, for which I am rather expensive—but somebody has to do my job and I prefer to do it than let someone else wreck all my hard work over the years which would also impact upon students and teachers.

“No, she doesn’t like being in an office all day, do you, Mummy?” declared Hannah, “You like teaching don’t you?”

“Being out in the fields,” said Danielle before she went off to meet up with Cindy.

“Yeah, put her out to grass—isn’t that what they say?” said Trish and I went off to my study and a cup of tea before I murdered the lot of them.