The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2754 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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Another day at the office began with someone, one of the ecology lecturers, calling in sick—he’d got knocked off his bike riding home and had broken his clavicle. Wonderful, just what I needed. Diane looked sheepish when she told me.

“Okay, see if we can organise a get well card—it shows we’ve at least got his message. What is he teaching?”

“Um—ecology of woodlands.”

“When?”

“Ten o’clock until twelve.”

“What’s in the diary?”

“Nothing we can’t postpone—like a tutorial with Graham.”

“Okay, if I can find my notes, I’ll do it.”

“Won’t your students be surprised?”

“Yeah, but I expect they’ll live with the disappointment.”

Before I could as much as move, Diane had gone to the filing cabinet and in two ticks had produced a box file with my lecture notes in it and handed it to me. I thanked her and before she left handed a sheaf of notes and asked her to copy them as handouts for each student. I also asked her to ask the duty technician to come up and see me. I had an hour to decide how I’d work it. I’d dressed casually that morning in a pair of dark brown corduroy trousers, brown ankle boots with a two inch heel and a floral blouse with a vee neck and a beige cord jacket. At least I’d be able to move around freely—two hours—oh well, I supposed I could wing it for a couple of hours and I’m a professor, so no one is going to challenge me if they want a degree at the end of their course.

The technician was John, a new one who was covering Hilary, who was on maternity leave. If we liked him I might try and find some money to extend his contract. He’d never worked with me before and knowing that I was top banana, was eager to please. I told him how I wanted to play it.

“You’re going to make them work a bit aren’t you, Professor?”

“I thought that was the whole point of coming to a university.”

“Yes, but some lecturers just distribute facts or theories.”

“I’ll do a bit of that but the objective is to make them use the grey blob they have for more than keeping their ears apart. Between them they’ll have all sorts of knowledge, my job is to find out what they don’t know and fill the gaps, but we’ll do it my way—today at least.”

“How long is Dr Hawkins off?”

“At least a week depending upon if they have to operate or not.”

“There’s another of his classes next week.”

“Let’s see what happens today before we decide what we’ll do then.” John went off to set up the equipment I’d need. I had a final glance through my notes and hoped we still had the props I’d used a couple of years ago—a plan was coming together.

At five minutes to ten I strolled into the back entrance to lecture theatre one. I expected to have up to a hundred students there.I strolled out onto the stage—an elevated platform about a foot above the floor level with a bench across the front and various controls for lighting, projectors and so on. It also had a gas point for a Bunsen burner and a sink fitted at the one end. As soon as I came onto the stage there was a burst of applause—what for, I hadn’t done anything yet? I also glanced around the room, it was full to capacity and Diane was sitting on the end of the first row of tiered seats. What was she doing here?

I quietened things down and explained that Dr Hawkins was off for the moment and I was stepping in to do this lecture. There was more applause. I was obviously missing something because I had no idea what that was all about.

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get started. I already know quite a bit about ecology and also about woodlands. In fact, it might be said that I know a fair bit about the ecology of woodlands, which is why I standing up here. Now in a normal lecture, the object is to transfer the information I have in my notes into your notebooks without it passing through the minds of either of us. If that’s how you’d like it to be, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I like to see my students work, partly because it saves me having to, but also because you might just learn something from today’s effort.”

Basically, I showed them a short clip of film demonstrating what constituted a woodland, and there are several types depending upon where you are and how you classify them. “I showed you that just in case you’re all Eskimos and have never seen a woodland before. I want you all to write down one thing about woodlands that you believe to be true, so things like the names of things that live there or what happens there or what does what there.” I gave them a couple of minutes to write something down.

“Starting from you at the back,” I pointed at a young man, “I want everyone to call out what they’ve written down, and John will type them onto the screen behind.” It took half an hour to get through them all and we obviously had several duplicates but we were building up a picture of a woodland and some of its occupants.

John had listed things under certain headings, so trees and insects were under different columns. He could also move things around and as the list grew we developed several new headings and moved things about from one to another column.

So far I hadn’t told them anything, all the information was provided by the students. When we started exploring relationships between different things like oak trees and purple hairstreak butterflies, or acorns and dormice, it became a bit more complicated and we had different coloured lines connecting different things with half a dozen headings.

With half an hour to go I asked them where man featured in the woodland structure we’d created. The first few answers were funnies and I gave them a moment longer to think about it.

After a few minutes of slightly better answers I suggested that there was little or no ancient forest in the UK and most of Europe which hadn’t been affected by man in one way or another. I reminded them that most of Britain was covered in forest until the Neolithic when man had cleared large amounts to use for kindling or the beginnings of agriculture were just starting.

I pointed out that woodland was a huge reservoir of raw materials from timber to plants and animals we used or exploited. I had them guessing at the life span of trees, fungi, flowering plants, insects, birds and mammals. Most were some distance from the actual average. Most mice live a year or two if they’re lucky. Dormice live up to five years in the wild and beyond that in laboratories.

I dismissed them for lunch telling them to do a questionnaire I appended to the handouts. It appeared that Diane had heard about my teaching and was surprised I hadn’t produced fireworks. I told her that was the one I did on bonfire night.