The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2512 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad

---

Delia producing a mug of tea helped to dispel my funk and I apologised for my earlier outburst. “You don’t like managing a department as much as you enjoy teaching, do you?”

I looked at her, “No, and I don’t like teaching as much as I do fieldwork, except when it’s tipping down or freezing cold.”

“That sounds sensible enough to me.” She turned and went from my office leaving me alone with my thoughts. I’d admitted that I wasn’t professorial material yet I was doing the job, probably very badly. I decided that I would talk to Daddy this evening and perhaps foreshorten this purgatory.

I didn’t really enjoy teaching, oh the bit about corrupting young minds in a lecture hall or classroom was fine, it was the marking and filling in forms I didn’t like or preparing the material to teach. Perhaps I was just lazy and doing marking didn’t give me the adrenalin buzz that performing did, sorry teaching. Did I only do it for the buzz? I didn’t think so, riding my bike would provide that with far less effort.

I got into teaching because Daddy invited me to do some to boost my financial status. It wasn’t something I had really thought about before because I saw my position as a student there to learn, whereas the reality was it's possible to be a student and teach those with less knowledge than I had. Having accepted the challenge to do some teaching, I wanted what I did as a teacher to penetrate deeper into the minds of my students than some of the lecturers I remembered as a student myself—some were so dire I had to go and research the subject on my own. In the end I did well out of it because I had to work to obtain the knowledge which was why I got a first in the end, most of my contemporaries didn’t bother. I suspect it was also why I was invited to come to Portsmouth, because Professor Herbert recognised my researcher potential.

Of course the fact that I didn’t fraternise much with others also meant that I tended to work, albeit in a skirt, than go out to the student’s union drinking and partying the night away. I learnt loads about biology/ecology but little about life—given that biology is the study of life, I felt there was a certain irony here.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d transitioned at Sussex, I suspect I’d have been even more of a mouse than I was as a sort of boy. It was only with Stella’s tutelage and encouragement that Cathy really came of age, without it, I might have been still hiding away in the shadows. In truth it was more than Stella who brought me out into the sunlight, Simon and Tom also helped but in different ways. Tom turned me into an academic, Simon helped to broaden my experience as a—I’m tempted to say, broad, but that tends to refer to a certain kind of woman and I was dragged up proper like.

Teaching is often seen as a feminine occupation because it nurtures younger people. Ecology, could also be seen in the same way because it’s about understanding the relationship between species and habitats, unlike agriculture which seems to be about plundering the earth. So it’s hardly unexpected that I find myself in teaching or ecology and combine the two and I hit the jackpot, except what I’m currently having to do, is deal with management of people and the politics that go with it, as well as the economic elements. Okay so essentially it’s just playing housewife on a grander scale.

Peculiarly, being a wife is a feminine occupation and believe it or not so is being a mother. Apart from loving my assorted brats to death, in some ways I see parallels in nurturing my students and my children, though obviously the latter get a more comprehensive approach.

I sipped my tea, should I ask Tom about shortening my period as a head of a department? Based on my grumbles above, it seemed like a sensible thing but I know he’d argue against it. I tried to think what he would say. It would be about getting my adrenalin buzzes from maintaining some teaching—some profs do—or from dealing with accountants and the like, defending my empire and its subjects. Perhaps I should have called myself Victoria, or would that have been plum loco? Simon would probably suggest I was more like the Empress of Blandings, but who listens to his opinions apart from Mima.

Tom would also point out the fact that being a professor was still about nurturing young minds, which is the reason most do it, only it’s a bit like being a grandparent, facilitating it through protecting an environment for others to do the actual direct nurturing like parents, or educating the people who ultimately will become teachers. Perhaps I’ll do it a bit longer, or until I can produce an argument he won’t overturn—back to the drawing board.

Delia brought some letters for me to sign and interrupted my reverie. “Professor, it’s after three.”

“Three—there’s half a dozen here,” I exclaimed pointing to the letters.

“No, Professor, the time, it’s gone three o’clock.”

“Oh poo, must collect the girls.” I dashed frantically to the car and thence to school.

Once again I found Trish holding court with the headmistress and the others sitting at her feet. “How d’you know about this, Trish?” asked Sister Maria.

“It was in a book I got from the library.”

“The school library?”

“No, Mummy borrows ones from the university if I give her the information, the wotsit BN number thingy, title and author and when it was put out in the shops.”

“You mean published?”

“Yes, that’s the word.”

“What was the book, Trish?”

“Fifty quantum physics ideas you need to know.”

“What’s the fascination of Quantum Mechanics, Trish?” asked the headmistress, “I can barely get my head round the concept of it.”

“Because nothing is exactly as it seems, Miss.”

“Don’t you find that a bit scary?”

“Oh no, Miss, I’ve grown up with the idea.”

“What d’you mean, you’re only nine now, so how can you have grown up with this paradoxical concept.”

“What’s that mean?”

“A paradox is something which isn’t what it seemed at first, it might be something quite different.”

“Does that make me a parrot’s box, Miss?”

Which when I thought I’d make myself known to them. “I thought I heard voices I recognised.”

“We were just talking about some book you got for Trish,” offered Sister Maria.

“The Quantum one?”

“Yes.”

“I bought it for her.”

“I thought you got it from the library, Mummy.”

“No, I bought that one.”

“D’you know what a parrot’s box is, Mummy?”

“You don’t perchance mean paradox, do you, sweetheart?”

“Do I?” she asked the headmistress who nodded.

“Yes, I do sweetheart.”

“Oh,” she said looking deflated.

“You weren’t expecting that, Trish, so is it a paradox?” teased Livvie, the other bright spark.

“’Snot fair,” said Trish.