The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2556 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

Tuesday proved to be a day when I couldn’t concentrate on anything much because I was worried about the next day and the trip to Reading. I was thinking more about packing the car with shovels and flasks of hot water, K rations and wellingtons than I was about tutorials or even teaching.

“Professor—yoo hoo.”

I came back to the present with a start. “Ooh, sorry, Delia, what did you want?”

“Is something worrying you?”

“A little. My daughter has to go to Reading tomorrow for a selection and training session.”

“Selection for what, Professor?”

“Sorry, didn’t I say? The England schoolgirl’s football team.”

“Wow, you must be so proud of her.”

“I am, but she hasn’t been selected yet.”

“Isn’t that just a formality? If she takes after you, she’ll be in all right.”

“I have two left feet, Delia; I could no more bend it like Beckham, than I could conjugate like Boris.”

She looked blankly at me. “I get the gist I think, who’s Boris and what’s conjugating?”

Sometimes this is like talking to my children. “Boris is mayor of London. Conjugation is something that’s done to verbs, especially in Latin. Boris studied classics.”

“Was that before he won Wimbledon?”

“Wimbledon?”

“Yeah, wasn’t he the youngest man to win the men’s singles?”

“He rides a bike but I don’t think he ever won Wimbledon, I think we’ve got our Borises mixed up.”

“Boris Beckham, he won Wimbledon, didn’t he?”

“Uh, I think you mean Boris Becker, the German tennis player?”

“Yeah, what did I say then?”

“Boris Beckham.”

She laughed and showed a mouthful of small white teeth with no obvious fillings. “Oops, that is so funny.” To prove her point she laughed again.

“What did you want?”

“Oh, I’ve forgotten now.” She scratched her head, “Oh yes, the Dean wants you to go to lunch with him.” I didn’t really want to go to eat with anyone, especially Daddy. “He’ll come by at twelve, he told me to tell you to be ready.”

I glanced at my watch, it was only ten to ten, how was I going to survive for another two hours?

“You remembered you had a tutorial in ten minutes?”

“What, this morning?”

I checked my diary and there in an alien hand was the tutorial with Janice Beer, another MSc candidate. I was horrified, I couldn’t think of anything to say to her apart from well done. I consulted my diary and discovered it was in this room. Oh dear.

I dashed down to the staff loo and after returning the fluid if not the actual tea, I brushed my hair, freshened my lippy, powdered my wotsit and squirted a little perfume on myself.

We usually used a neutral room rather than my office, too many distractions; but if this all that was available, it would have to do. While Delia did something useful—making us coffee, I quickly perused Janice’s coursework and outline for her dissertation. I’m not assessing it, but I appear to be her tutor, a hangover from my previous position as reader rather than professor—oh well, I’m sure we’ll both cope.

Janice was a pleasant girl of about twenty four with dirty blonde hair, glasses and freckles. When she laughed, she showed higgledy-piggledy teeth, a sure sign of overcrowding—didn’t her parents do dentists? Perhaps not, they were missionaries or something so probably spent all their time looking after the dental health of kids in darkest Africa and neglected their own. Janice went to boarding school in the midlands near Nottingham.

The notes I’d made earlier contain criticisms and compliments, she was happier researching papers in a library than in the field or even a laboratory. Quite what she was doing biology for, I never quite discovered. I had to try and encourage her to do some lab or fieldwork unless she altered her dissertation title to a theoretical view. She seemed happier to do that than go and count dormice or even weeds on the path.

I’d even suggested that to her, to clear a strip of her garden and see what colonised it in what order. Then she could research colonisation strategies of various plants and write up a report on it. She didn’t want to do it, so I gave the idea to another girl who nearly hugged me to death. She went off to do test areas in various places, to be checked every week. I declined to supervise that one, she needed a botanist to ensure identification of every species she encountered.

In the end Janice agreed to do a meta analysis for her master’s, though I left her to think what she’d be analysing. I suspect it would involve something that had a large numbers of papers written such as diseases in bees or pesticide use and its effect upon wildlife. I wished her well, finding then reading a large number of papers then analysing them, wasn’t my idea of a fun afternoon. But we’re all different.

Lunch with Daddy was ‘aboot the twa lassies’ I’d engaged to keep house for us. I answered all his queries, including pointing out the sacred space he called his study. I’d be sure to tell them to touch nothing. I felt like a prefect reporting to the duty teacher.

He also asked me about my trip to Reading and to be sure to see the weather forecast and take any necessary measures to ensure we got home safely. Then we talked about Danielle’s chances of getting picked for the team. I told him that as I didn’t have their criteria for selection, I had no idea if she’d be picked or not. As her mum, I naturally felt she was the best player since Stanley Matthews, but I wasn’t sitting on the selection committee and had no idea of strategies they were planning on playing. I didn’t even know who they were playing or when, let alone where.

“Ye can find oot while Danni’s showin’ then hoo tae play thae game.” I told him that that was exactly what I had in mind, depending upon who was at the session. I also wanted to know where I got tickets. “Oh aye, get me a ticket, hen.” I wondered if he thought I was going to lay him one.

It was too soon time to return to our respective ivory towers where I had one more tutorial to do. I lead such a fun life—not. Another MSc candidate who was the opposite of Janice, he was hands on with little or no theory. Unless you quote source material it’s very difficult to make a positive case for observing certain behaviour.

That was such a difficult hour because he didn’t seem to get the idea at all and I wondered how he got a bachelor’s degree—it was probably a BA and in something like flower arranging or soft porn. I honestly wondered what some of them were doing on this course. Oh well, it pays my salary, so it can’t be all bad, can it?

Time to collect the mouseketeers.