The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2815 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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Tuesday followed Monday, which I’m pretty sure I could have predicted. Simon still hadn’t asked to see the dress though he would tonight. I checked I could get my mobile in my little handbag and checked my shoes were okay. I’d worn them a few times but always polished them afterwards with some polish called Scuffcote or something similar, which is intended for easy renovation of kid’s shoes, you paint it on and leave to dry, then buff to a nice shine. It certainly did the trick.

I got the girls organised and changed into a trouser suit for the lecture I was going to give, even using a bit of makeup and jewellery and wearing a pair of shoes with heels. My lecture wasn’t until eleven but I had plenty of paperwork to sort before that; in fact I was so involved in it that Diane came in with a fresh cuppa saying, “You realise it’s gone half past ten?”

I hadn’t but thanked her for her reminder and found the folder I had with the talk written in, except the papers weren’t there. I called Diane and she was mystified as she could have sworn she’d put them in that particular file. Thankfully, the slides were on memory stick so if necessary I’d talk to them, except it isn’t very professional. Diane disappeared and two or three minutes later came back with a fresh copy of the script and placed it on my desk. “Don’t lose this one,” she said assertively. I promised I wouldn’t.

After finishing my tea and mince pie, well it’s a long walk to the main hall and I might get peckish, I checked my makeup and went to the loo, then I followed the majority of people who were walking to the main hall. In doing so I overheard a conversation between two students.

“You know anything about this Professor Watts?”

“Not a lot ’cept they say she used to be a man.”

“Don’t fancy listenin’ to no pervert.”

“It’ll be a laugh, let’s see how many things give her away.”

“Like big ’ands an’ feet?”

“Don’t they always have Adam’s apples an’ deep voices?

“’Spect so.”

“An’ spottin’ the tranny will be more interestin’ than some stupid talk.” It would be interesting to see if they listened or not, my ego said.

Tom was going to introduce me and I decided I’d wait until he finished before I appeared on stage. For those who didn’t know me, it would keep the tension mounting for a couple more minutes. I handed the memory stick to John the technician who went and loaded it into the computer. I would then have a remote clicker to move the slides on or reverse them.

Tom popped in to the little room backstage and asked if I was ready. I nodded. “I’ll introduce ye then.”

He wandered back to the hall where the noise level was increasing and I could definitely feel the energy and anticipation rising. “Ladies and gentlemen, Vice Chancellor, Sir David...”

I didn’t hear any more of what was said trying to think who Sir David was, probably some local politician or business man. They usually have someone to propose a vote of thanks after the questions are over. So that’s probably who it is. I glanced at my script, until I heard Daddy say, “So without further ado, please welcome Professor Cathy Watts who’s going to talk to you about the most important step in evolution.”

I stood up, took a deep breath and walked out onto the stage. There was a hush before a roar of applause happened. I stood for a moment trying to see who was there but with up to five hundred faces to scan I could only recognise Diane and one or two of my students. Oh well here goes...

“Mr Chairman, Vice Chancellor, esteemed guests, ladies, gentlemen and anyone else who doesn’t fit into any of those categories. It’s funny because much of biology is about putting things into categories—classification we call it—but it’s not especially relevant to my subject today. I’m going to talk to you about evolution, you know how things develop to take advantage of their situation or environment or adapt to changes in their situation or environment.”

I pressed the first slide which showed a cartoon of a number of pictures starting with one of the primeval ooze and running up through various stages until we had some sort of ape becoming a hominid and this turning into Charles Darwin who was the end of the line. It got one or two smiles from the biologists in the assembled throng.

“Now some of you might believe that the most important step was the final one, the emergence of Homo sapiens from the hominids or stages in between. I’ll accept it’s quite important because it could be how we got here, apart from our parents getting amorous in the back of the car in lover’s lane. I remember once seeing a wonderful statistic which suggested that ninety per cent of motorists were the result of accidents.” There were one or two chortles loud enough for me to hear then some groans as others finally got the joke. Well it is a university, they’re supposed to be able to think—occasionally.

“A long time ago in this galaxy, actually on this particular planet we call earth, though most of it is water, at least on the surface, something remarkable happened. Life began and although we don’t entirely understand the mechanism—yet, it happened, probably about four thousand million years ago or four billion years give or take the odd week.

“In those days, the height of evolutionary sophistication were simple celled bacteria, which we call simple because their nucleus had no membrane around it.” I showed the slide of a simple bacteria. “These abounded for some two thousand million years and many are still with us today—not the originals—duh.” That got a laugh so some of them were still awake—good sign. “Then what we call a singularity happened and this is what I consider to be the most important step in all evolution, but before we deal with that, let’s look at the term singularity.

“Usually this means a one off. In the case of this viewpoint I’m using it to mean it hasn’t happened again in modern times though it must have happened many many times at this period of the development of life forms on this planet and why we think it hasn’t happened again in more recent times.

“For some reason, some simple celled bacteria ingested or absorbed another one, which they do for food or to reduce competition and so on, but instead of digesting it, the prey item was held within the protoplasm of the predator and a symbiotic relationship began.” I showed them some simple diagrams to explain what I’d just described.

“As our host bacteria divided so too did the visitor and replicas of the new creature were created—effectively a new species had been created with a major difference, it now contained a second nucleus and this had a membrane around it. Complex celled organisms had evolved, and if we look at an electron micrograph of a complex cell, we can see the nucleus with the membrane, some have two or three membranes but we also see other structures like mitochondria, which are thought to have again originated as other simple celled bacteria and we think, some of the predator bacteria absorbed more than one other individual because it gave it some sort of advantage, if only in extra genetic material but also we know, where the prey bacteria was a cyanobacterium these often went on to form chloroplasts and evolved into the green plants we have today.

“The reason I think it was so important in evolutionary terms is because everything since, all the wonderful animals and plants we see in our world today, evolved from these new complex cells which were forming some one to two billion years ago. And that includes everyone here—except possibly one or two first years in media studies.” That got a roar of laughter.

“Only joking...” and I was about to continue when some wag called out, ‘Can’t you be more exact about the timing of this?’ “Okay, it was a Tuesday afternoon at the end of March because British Summer Time had been introduced and they think that was what caused it to happen...”