The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2921 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 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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At lunch I tried to explain that I saw teaching as the original performance art unless you consider religion—I try not to, but there is even more theatre in it because you’re trying to con people into imagining all sorts of things. In teaching I’m trying to present facts but in a way that integrates them with theories. If they did the same with religion we’d all be atheist in a generation.

I told Debbie that if she considered herself to be a performer who was trying to educate rather than an educator who was trying to entertain, she might develop the right sort of mindset. Then think how you might perform something revolving round the facts you wanted to get across, then next time you do it you do the same but change the performance. What she had to bear in mind was that the educational bit had to be the core of it all or they’ll go out feeling good but not knowing anything extra to when they came in.

She said she’d have a think about it but I told her to stay with what she felt comfortable and change it gradually. Having come from a school and university background of here are the facts integrate and use them in which I’d at first floundered then got the point, I decided to try something completely different in which I tried to make teaching an audience participation exercise. So dropping bat poo everywhere was really one of those as they had to clear it up to analyse it.

I also gave the cleaner a tenner and she sorted out the rest of it with her Dyson.

“Goodness, I can remember sitting for an hour or two in lectures writing down reams of stuff and never looking at it again and I know none of it stuck because I couldn’t remember a single word of it. Now if you’d been teaching me, I’d have strong images of certain points which I could then recall more easily. Wow, that is really sneaky.”

“That’s me. So where did you go to school?” I enquired.

“Mainly in High Wycombe but we moved to Manchester just after I started high school and ended up in Manchester Grammar.”

“I went to Bristol Grammar.”

“What was it like, single sex or mixed?”

“Single then it’s changed since.”

“Manchester was mixed by the time I went there, so what was a girls’ school like?”

Oh boy, does she not know about me then? Or is she seeking to trip me up? “Not much fun, all jolly hockey sticks or netball and I was rubbish at both.” That was true, on the single occasion I tried either, having been sent over to the girls’ school, I was total rubbish. “I did quite well academically, so was forgiven eventually for being rubbish at games.” That was total fiction as Murray only left me alone when her saw me breastfeeding Cate. “What about you?”

“Only thing I wanted to do was play in the biology lab, so I volunteered to clean out the cupboards so I could look at all the specimens and they had hundreds. I’d spend most of my lunchtimes there—helped me to avoid the bullies as well.”

“Boys or girls?”

“Both—we were an equal opportunities school.”

“I learned to run quickly at the first sign of trouble.”

“Probably the best policy, though not one you necessarily espouse now, is it?”

I gave her an old fashioned look.

“Just going on the stuff I saw about you in the net.”

“What stuff?”

“Oh fighting Russian mafia to rescuing babies in cars and so on. Then of course the stuff about your films and the youtube clip with the dormouse.”

“I suppose there are worst epithets to have attached to you, mine is the woman who juggled dormice.”

“When will I get to see some of these gorgeous creatures?”

“We can go after we finish eating.”

I led her down to the labs. “They might still be hibernating but as soon as the temperature externally rises to double figures we have a small food supply available so there may be one or two around. The one that parachuted into my bra isn’t here any longer, she died.”

“Oh what a pity.”

“Yeah, my kids loved her so when she died we had a little service and buried her in the orchard.”

“You have an orchard?”

“My adopted dad does.”

“I thought you were married with loadsa kids—that’s what Esmond told me, married to some peer or other.”

“I am but we all live in my adopted father’s house, we had an extension built a few years ago so we have a library cum study and so on.”

“Wow—I’d love to see it sometime.”

“It’s an old farmhouse, hence the orchard.”

“Sounds nice.”

“I’ll speak to David see when he’s off.”

“Is that your hubby?”

“No, my cook—well chef, actually.”

“You have a chef? Wow, does he come with the butler?”

“No he’s a one off. I have a lady who helps round the house and some of my elder daughters help with the little ones.”

“How many kids have you got?”

I began counting on my fingers. “Eleven.”

“Eleven kids—how have you managed to have a career and eleven kids?”

I shrugged, “It was difficult at times.”

“Eleven kids,” she shook her head, “I mean you’d have to be pregnant every year since you graduated.”

“They’re adopted.”

“What all of them?”

“Yeah, as Simon said, we got to choose the pretty ones, if we’d made our own they might have been ugly.”

She roared with laughter. “He’s quite a catch by the sound of it.”

“I think so.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s in banking.”

“Cameron—banking—Simon. Bloody hell you’re married to Simon Cameron of High St Banks.”

“I was this morning, so I guess I probably still am—is that a problem?”

“You’re Lady Cameron?”

“Here I’m just Cathy Watts, or Dr Watts or even Professor Watts.”

“No wonder you have a chef, he’s a millionaire.”

“I’ve never asked him how much he earns.”

“Crikey, I’m almost amongst royalty here.”

The dormice were mainly still in hibernation but two were feeding and moving about in the compound we built for them.

“Oh my god, they are so cute,” she said almost melting when I placed a torpid one in her hand. She put it up to her ear, “Oh my, he’s snoring.”

“Some of them do.”

“How many have you got here?”

“At present about twenty, we’ll release four or five in May if it’s warm enough and the others we keep as breeding ones.”

“I’d love to be doing something like this.”

“Stick around long enough and you probably will as I don’t have time to direct it as much as it probably needs. At the moment, John our main technician does most of it and we pay him for his trouble.” As I spoke so John came out of his room and went out through the lab, nodding to us as he went.

“Wow. Is he like, married?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s nice.”

“He’s a very good technician.”

“I’ll bet,” she said licking her lips.