The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2714 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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Tom poked his head around the edge of my study door. “Whit’s this aboot Trish nearly droonin’?”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, Daddy, she lost her flippers and was trying to recover them and disappeared from view for a few minutes.”

“Whit d’ye mean, disappeared?”

“I was walking along the edge of the waterline with Cate and Lizzie and one moment Trish was in view snorkelling and the next she wasn’t. She’s quite a good little swimmer so I wasn’t worried for a moment but she did give me a bit of a scare. The next minute she standing by the side of me apologising for losing her flippers, which turned up a bit later and she got them back.”

“An’ ye’re no gang tae speak tae her aboot it?”

“I told her she gave us all a scare and I think I might just let the flippers disappear.”

He gave me an old fashioned look and smiled, “Ma Catherine had an air pistol an’ use tae shoot at thae birds in thae gerden. It jest disappeared.”

“Things do, Daddy. When I was a kid, my parents used to tell me the fairies took it when things disappeared.”

“Is that whit happened wi’ yer doll?”

“No, he told me he smashed it up and thrown it away. He hadn’t of course but only because my mother stopped him and it was hidden up in the attic.”

Tom shook his head and frowned. “I canna understand yer faither, cud he no see ye were a lassie?”

“Obviously not. It challenged his map of the universe as you’ll know from your adjustment to enable your Catherine to fulfil herself.”

“Aye, it took a wee bit o’ gettin’ oor heids around it, but if ye love yer child, hoo can ye no try tae understand her?”

“Some people are more adaptable than others. My dad was obviously one who needed more incentives than others.”

“Aye weel it’s no ma business tae judge others. I’ll leave ye tae yer work if that’s thae mammal survey.”

“How d’ya guess?”

He smiled and left me to my labours. I wasn’t alone for long. “Dinner is served, madam,” David informed me.

“What’s wrong with the gong?”

“The end’s fallen off the stick.”

For a moment I had to think what he was talking about. Of course, the stick for bashing said bit of brass has a padded bit on the end. If it’s fallen off and Bramble encountered it, it could be anywhere now. Oh well a task for the girls after dinner.

Dinner was a freshly roasted ham and it was delicious, which of course goes without saying if David cooked it. I’d been raised on boiled ham with gallons of pea and ham soup afterwards—‘not to waste the stock’—but his roast ham was melt in the mouth stuff and not salty at all.

I left the girls searching for our missing gong thingy and retired to my study to finish dealing with emails about the survey. One of these was from Sussex, from Abi.

‘Hi Cathy,
Any chance you could do a talk to our wildlife trust about dormice or harvest mice and turning them into film stars? We’ve had a cancellation for next week, I expect that’s too short notice, the other dates would be end of the year stuff or early next.
Love,
Abi.’

I wrote back to her asking which day next week and did they have a projector available. I expected to have a response the next day or so, instead it was almost instant.

‘It’s Monday, a bit short notice—sorry.’

I had a little think, if Jacquie was around on Monday evening, I could do it and there’d probably be fewer people around mid-August than in the winter. I went and found her and she said she would be here and to go if I wanted. I immediately emailed Abi to ask where and what time.

Brighton in August is not the nicest place to be if you don’t like crowds of aimless grockles clogging up the roads, footpaths and cycle paths. Fortunately, it was in a hall in a village just north of the city and I knew it having cycled out there when I was a student. I checked on an internet map and I thought I could find it without too much trouble, she’d bring a digital projector and I was a life saver—otherwise they’d have to have a member’s evening. I was slightly surprised they did talks in the summer, usually it’s field work or walks in the countryside or along the coast and evening in the pub discussing what you saw or missed.

I emailed Alan and asked for any outtakes we had from Harvest Mouse – the movie. He replied he’d have a look and send them by courier. I wondered if we could do it by the internet, I paid enough for the bloody thing and it was supposed to be super fast—though at times I suspect that meant it was stuck and would not be moved however much pressure was applied. I’d check tomorrow and see if he’d found any.

Basically, I’d do a rehash of previous talks with clips from the film or cutting room floor. I knew we had one or two from the second film because in one instance the mice escaped from the tank we were filming in. The object of the tank was to prevent them escaping, except we failed to spot a stalk of corn which had bent over the top of the tank and the two little buggers legged it. Thankfully, only as far as the next tub of corn which was how we discovered their escape. We returned from lunch and entered the greenhouse only to see them disappear into the second tub of wheat. We quickly enclosed the tub in a plastic sheet and managed then to trap our two houdinis.

The camera, which was a camcorder type, was set on motion sensor and captured the whole escape. I would title that clip if we still had it, ‘The escape from Coleslaw.’ I knew we had other bits of disaster as well including doing some filming as the copper chopper was flying directly overhead, the noise was deafening and the mice just disappeared down the stalks for twenty minutes or so.

In one or two bits of filming we did in the field, or should that be fields? We nearly got run over by a roe deer buck which almost walked into us as we were hiding in the wheat. The mess it made of the wheat as it ran away would not have endeared it to the farmer, who was a nice enough fellow and who had responded to our request for sightings of harvest mice. His reward—a copy of the film and a mention of his farm in the credits—he had a farm shop, so any publicity would be useful.

Simon arrived home late from a meeting at Winchester and he was very tired, so after he had something to eat, we had a glass of wine and went to bed. He was asleep almost as soon as he got into bed and I was slightly irked as I’d wanted to speak to him about my talk. Ho hum.