Easy As Falling Off a Bike pt 3162

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The Daily Dormouse.
(aka Bike, est. 2007)
Part 3162
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.
*****

“So Mummy helped the ghost lady, I didn’t see her but Danni did.” Hannah recounted our adventure regarding the Huntingtower Castle visit.

“I knew I shoulda come, she usually messes up with ghosts and things, I usually have to sort things out.”

That level of arrogance could only come from one source. I’d brought the youngsters back some Edinburgh rock, which is a sweet, actually make that very sweet, soft stick of floury candy. I hated it as a kid but always ate it usually regretting it a while later. I much preferred sticks of seaside rock from England or Wales, which is hard and crunchy and probably just as damaging to teeth, but less cheek suckingly sickly than Edinburgh rock.

I also brought them some clothing socks or scarves and the two men, some whisky in a set of small bottles of different blends. I noticed the smiles of appreciation.

Leaving the girls talking, I went to see what my other fellow traveller was up to. She was on the phone talking to Cindy. “Yeah, Mum like saved my life by zapping the ghost with holy water or something and then she zapped the cameras of all these Chinese tourists, shoulda seen their faces...Yeah, a chink in their armour, very good.”

I remembered reading about a diplomat who used the same expression at a formal dinner with some Chinese high ups, his career ended the next day, they weren’t aware of the expression and complained that he was insultingly racist. Still diplomacy is about communication so I suppose he should have known what he was doing.

After dealing with some emails from work, I asked the girls what they wanted to do. They didn’t know, so when I suggested a trip to the hotel swimming pool, it met with approval and a rush to find swimming costumes. Danielle showed me a letter from the FA, she’d been left out of the squad for some tournament thing to rest her. It rambled on about her youthfulness and not wanting to over work her.

“It’s because they complained that I used to be a boy.”

“But they said they supported your case and also that it complied to international sporting standards and guidelines concerning transgender athletes. I’m sorry sweetheart, do you want me to get Jason to write to them?”

“Nah, when they get beaten without me, they’ll realise how good I am. We going swimmin’ then?”

She acted almost indifferently to the letter, they had said for her to stay training because if they had any injuries, they might need to call on her. If it had been my decision, I’d have told them where they could stick their team and how far. But it wasn’t so I had to support whatever she seemed to want to do.

“Can Cindy come?” she asked going up to her room.

“If there’s room in the bus?”

“Bus?” she queried.

“The VW thingy.”

“The Sharran.”

“Yeah, Sharon,” I agreed knowing full well she’d said something different but it was what I called it anyway. It seats about eight, so with everyone including the littlies, we just managed to get everyone in.

I took my cossie and spent most of the time with Cate and Lizzie. Cate swims quite well and did a few widths with Danielle watching her as Cindy and she swam back and fore. Lizzie isn’t scared of the water despite ingesting half the pool when she fell off the side while getting ready to jump in. She was lucky she didn’t bash her head as she went down but she came up coughing and spluttering but also laughing.

One of the staff came over to me and asked if she could help Lizzie learn to swim if I wanted to a few lengths. Yeah, right—me swim lengths—well I can but very slowly and I’m all out of breath after the first one no matter what stroke I do or how gently I take it. I suppose improvement only comes with practice so I managed two lengths before deciding to stop or share my breakfast with the other swimmers. Certainly Lizzie was swimming better and seemed to be enjoying it.

I took over watching Cate leaving Danielle and Cindy to do some proper swimming. Danielle is a very good swimmer and has a certificate in life saving, though in the bikini she was wearing, she was likely to cause heart attacks to any males watching. Had I known she was going to wear something which was bought for sitting by the pool in Menorca, I’d have made her change, but she was changed and out in the water before I saw her. Cindy, who hasn’t had surgery, was much more circumspect although she’s developing quite a nice figure as well. It happens I suppose if you take the pills young enough.
On the way home, we stopped for ice creams. I could have got them at the hotel but I don’t like to take too much advantage of the place, even though Henry tells me that’s what it’s there for. I wasn’t brought up that way so I prefer to pay my way even to the rip off prices I paid for ices in the cafe at Southsea.

“Could we do some sewing, Aunty Cathy?” asked Cindy. As I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, I agreed. Danni and Trish nodded while Meems and Livvie shook their heads. So they had to amuse themselves later that day because it’s what we did, Cindy having brought a half finished dress she needed some help with.

“I wish my mum could sew like you Aunty Cathy.”

“My mother was very good and showed me quite a few tricks with a needle.” She did too and the more I thought about it, the more I’m sure she knew something more than she ever let on. I mean why would you teach your son how to do darts in a garment as they’re usually around the bust in women’s clothes? But she did, she said for completeness. She made me do most of the repairs to my dad’s clothing presumably so he would approve of me learning. He grumbled at first but as she said it freed her up to do other things and all boys should learn to sew, he could hardly disagree.

Then the day he really beat me up after she discovered me doing embroidery. On reflection I think she was cross with me for being cheeky rather than the fact I was embroidering—it was only cross stitch stuff. I paid quite a penalty that night and if you recall tried to finish the job when I got back to Portsmouth. I never told either of them about it afterwards as my father would likely have said something like, ‘you couldn’t even do that properly’. My mum would have been horrified, partly because suicide is a mortal sin—well it’s certainly mortal, but I won’t dwell on it here.

We nearly finished Cindy’s dress and Trish sewed her sampler to the leg of her jeans, took me ages to separate them without undoing all the work she’d done. I kept telling her to watch out for her clothing but she carried on in her own sweet way. We all laughed afterwards, especially Livvie when Trish told her. Then David did us a delicious dinner of salmon in watercress sauce—scrumptious.

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Comments

It must be nice

to be able to access a swimming pool as and when you feel like it .... Might even encourage me to learn how to swim if i was in that fortunate position, Teachers at my secondary school that took the swimming lessons (once a fortnight for half the school year ) never seemed that interested if like me you were a little timid around water , I could never quite accept that a little piece of cork could save me from sinking to the bottom of the pool, If you add into that the smell of the chlorine that was used you can see why swimming never really happened for me ...

Kirri

i'm

Maddy Bell's picture

I have to say, not being modest at all, a great swimmer - I can get to the bottom faster than a brick!
Some wag entered me for a triathlon event at work many moons ago - I spent literally months practising and still struggled to do a length without drowning - I only had to do 11 more! Some how I made up the loss in the pool by winning both the running and cycling by a huge margin! However when it came to the company wide Olympics in Germany we all agreed it would be best if I stuck to running rather than drown in the lake! That was 1988 and i've been in a pool for a paddle about twice since although i've waggled a toe in the sea a few times.
I'm sure swimming is a useful skill but i'm apparently too dense to float!

Glad the Clan Cameron rate it as important tho'


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Madeline Anafrid Bell

Swimming lessons, two ways to

Swimming lessons, two ways to teach, support the child, and slowly lessen the support until they are soloing. Or the way I learned, Tossed into deep water and having to learn to swim and breathe at the same time. I prefer the first way !
Again a nice family story, I liked the holy water line.

Karen

What a wonderful day with her wonderful daughters

littlerocksilver's picture

Nice to read after spending most of the day writing reports on the trips I made last week, Over 410 miles on Friday with abot 250 of it in driving rain.

Portia

I spent much of my early childhood.......

D. Eden's picture

Living on the Florida Space Coast - Cocoa Beach, then Cape Canaveral, and finally Merritt Island. My father was an aerospace engineer who worked on the Gemini and Apollo projects with NASA, hence that part of my formative years being spent there.

As such, I learned how to swim in the local High School pool during summer school. Over several summers, I became quite the accomplished swimmer, a skill that later stood me in good stead when I joined the Navy.

D

D. Eden

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

splish splash, I was taking a bath

After my rude introduction to swimming, I became a certified SCUBA diver at 12 yrs old. youngest ever by this outfit, they thought I was 18 !

Karen