The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2552 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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It seemed to be morning again with unseemly haste and the space between waking up and finding myself in work again, a frenzied blur of activity. I once went to the loo mid morning and discovered I had my knickers on onside out—auto pilot, it appears, can get it wrong. It didn’t happen today, however, and I know this because I checked—a worrying symptom if ever there was one.

Delia, who was going to the dentist first thing, left me a note to remind me of that fact and also to inform me the other two candidates from the housekeeper shortlist had confirmed their attendance. That meant we’d have to make a decision, though when I thought about it, we’d been making decisions since the process started. Therefore one more was neither here nor there, except this time round we’d have met the people we were engaging or not, as the case may be.

The three names we’d decided to interview, I passed on to James, they each came back as having no negatives attached and as being real people. He also checked out the references and it seemed they were all in order. If they had anything about them, they would soon find out who was employing them from the calls to Delia and the address to attend for the interviews—our home.

I glanced at Delia’s note again, ‘Don’t forget you have a lecture to do at ten.’ This was news to me. My watch suggested I had half an hour to discover what it was all about because I felt completely oblivious to it.

I checked the diary in her office and there it was in black ink under her note, D – dentist 9.00am. CW – lecture on Mammal Survey to Ecology 1 group.’ Why hadn’t she told me I’d forgotten it? I supposed the note on my desk did that to some extent. I checked the filing cabinet and found the file with my notes from the conference we’d done in August. I’d adapt that. It was nine thirty five, just time to make a cuppa and amble over to LT2, the smaller lecture theatre.

While drinking my tea, I glanced at the print out of the slides on the accompanying CD, I could use much of them including the photos of mammals—the red deer stag from Exmoor—was particularly impressive. I thought I’d have that as my backdrop while the students assembled—about a hundred of them.

Finishing my tea, I checked my hair and makeup—the one addition I’d made to Tom’s old office—a nice wall mirror above the fireplace, plus a vase of artificial flowers, mainly poppies in the boarded up hearth. I was wearing a hacking jacket in brown herringbone with velvet collar, a cream silk blouse and beige trousers. On my feet were brown ankle boots with two inch heels. A quick squirt of perfume and I grabbed my bag and lecture notes before strolling over to the lecture theatre.

This one was only an hour in duration so no need for coffee or toilet breaks. At ten to ten, I went in through the staff entrance and Colin, the technician, told me what equipment Delia had ordered—basically, the digital projector. We went out into the auditorium and the place was filling up nicely while a clip from the dormouse film played on the big screen behind me accompanied by Sibelius’ Karelia Suite intermezzo.

I wasn’t sure about the theatrics as it made the place appear like a cinema, all we needed now was popcorn and the advertising with too loud music. The disc was accepted by the computer controlling the visuals and I switched it over to the red deer stag—it was a cracking photo.

On commenting to Colin about the music and film clip before we started, he told me Delia had organised it. She’d told him that as I didn’t lecture that often and my performance was usually dramatic or memorable, she thought a build up of atmosphere was desirable. He agreed. I wasn’t sure if I did but that would teach me to check my diary next time.

At ten o’clock I began and noticed Delia slip in at the back as I began speaking. I did a quick greeting and then spoke briefly about the principles of running a survey, setting criteria carefully because we tend to find what we’re looking for be that the presence or absence of the target group. I showed a few funnies while explaining it, then after confirming the principles, explained that I would be using the current mammal survey as a specific example as the university was now recognised as internationally important through coordinating the survey.

I tried to make it as interactive as I could by extracting answers not just giving information—involve your audience or entrance them—it tends to keep them awake. We looked at selection of habitat as opposed to selecting species, it might be required to look at a patch of woodland to see what was there prior to clearance or seeking a conservation order to protect it.

I reminded them that some species required licences, such as dormice, shrews and water-voles, also most birds of prey were protected and permits would be needed to take or disturb them—I nearly added unless one was a game keeper and then you could kill or harry anything except humans with little interference from the law.

I allowed ten minutes for questions which tended to indicate some had stayed awake. This had been an overview of surveys and techniques, they’d be taught the fine details out in the field—which I was now doing less of than ever. It now appeared to be my lot to train others and supervise them, or even supervising the supervisors.

Finally, one or two always come to ask personal questions or challenge something that I said but after most people have left. That takes a few minutes to deal with so it was easily quarter past eleven when I returned to my office a moment after which Delia appeared with a tea and a chocolate biscuit.

I made no mention of seeing her sneak in to listen to me—she claims she can justify it by understanding what I do better by listening to me teach. As Pippa takes the phones while she’s out of the office, we don’t miss too much. It appeared that one of our shortlisted candidates had dropped out, possibly after working out who was offering the job. Oh well, their loss. I mean it’s hardly Downton bleeding Abbey, is it?

Tom asked me to lunch which usually means he wants to talk about something. He did, the withdrawal of the person from the housekeeper job. As they gave no reason, we could only speculate that they either, didn’t like the bank or saw the size of the house and didn’t fancy it. Either way, we consoled ourselves with the fact that we still had two so there would be some choice.

He enquired about my lecture and I was able to report that it went okay as far as I could determine. “Aye, Delia said sae.” I thought she worked for me, not him.