The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3112 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 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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I was just about to suggest to my secretary that we popped over the refec for a snack lunch when she called me to say Tom was on his way over. Just what I needed—not.

My door was knocked and Diane announced the arrival of The Queen of Sheba. If she had it would have shaken me because that was what was playing on Classic fm, the music by Handel. Actually it was Tom, no not the Queen of ..., but you know what I mean.

“Hello, parental unit.” I beamed.

“Did ye send that obnoxious cephalopod tae see me?” he said frowning.

“Would I do a thing like that to you, Daddy dearest,” I replied smarmily.

“Aye, ye wud.”

“Give a dormouse a bad name...” I grumbled.

“It’s no yer bloody tree rats I’m ta’king aboot.”

“Not guilty.”

He glowered at me. “Sae wha sent him?”

“I suspect it may have been his own idea, why?”

“I’ll murder them.”

“If you kill me you’ll have to wash your own shirts and iron them.”

“Nah, jest dry them on a hanger.”

Damn, the ultimate sanction no longer works.

“I wis washin’ shirts afore ye were born.”

“So how come I get lumbered?”

“Why keep a dug an’ bark?”

“Cephalopod?” asked Diane.

“Cuttlefish, like octopuses are members of the cephalopoda class...”

“Is that like a biology class or a physics one?” she grinned.

“It’s part of the phylum Mollusca.”

“What you mean cuttlefish are no more than slugs and snails?”

“No they occur in the same phylum, as opposed to something like Arthropoda—which literally means jointed foot, and they have several classes so something as different as insects and crabs are both members of the arthropods, and likewise cephalopods and gastropods—the real slugs and snails are members of the molluscs.”

“Don’t octopuses and cuttlefish have jointed thingies?”

“No neither have any joints nor bones, there was an incredible piece of film on the internet recently of an octopus escaping from a fishing boat by squeezing itself through a tiny hole designed to drain water off the deck. They have tentacles but there are no bones in them and like cuttlefish, have the ability to swim away quickly using jets of water and of course the famous sepia ink can be ejected when they’re frightened.”

“So how come they aren’t in a class of inkypoos?”

“They’re in the order of Sepiidae.”

“Not Quink then?”

Tom decided he’d had enough of this nonsense, I mean he’s a no-nonsense scientist at the cutting edge of—um cheese knives. “Come, dochter escort me tae lunch, efter a’ this I need a curry.”

“I was just about to go with Diane,” I said wondering if I could escape what would be a boring diatribe of what Cuttleforth had complained about.

“Och, she cud come tae.”

“No that’s okay, professors, I’m quite happy to...”

“You don’t have a choice, Diane,” I explained, “it’s like a Papal bull, or some other sort of bull...”

“Okay, let me get my coat.” She went off to the kitchen room where she also hung her coat.

“Are ye implying I’m fu’ o’ bu’?” asked my adopted father.

“Um—if the horns fit...” was the best my frozen brain could conjure up.

Thankfully he laughed, but then most people may not have understood half of what he said, ‘full of bull.’ I grabbed my coat and bag and we went in my car to his usual haunt. Diane had been there before, so that held no surprises for her and Tom paid for all the food and drink—he is a generous soul—he must be to let me and burgeoning brood reside in his home, not to mention Simon and Stella and her two girls. However, the price we two innocents paid was his grumbling about Cuttlefish and how he wanted to report me for ignoring all his requests for extra equipment or staff.

In his defence, Tom explained the facts of life to our complaining academic saying he asked how many staff he’d lost—answer none. So I had actually protected his complement of teaching staff and technicians despite coping with cuts to my budgets by government. Apparently, when he said he preferred things when Tom had been dean of the faculty of science, Tom replied he was lucky that I was his boss now, because he, Tom, would have taken two per cent off his budget which could well have caused him to lose staff.

We all hoped that we’d be left in peace for a while now by the complaining microbiologist, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. In effect the way I’ve saved money is to cut the training budget, so anyone who wants to go to conferences has to pay their own way but we do give them the time off work to go. It’s a bit unsatisfactory, but so far I haven’t lost any staff through the cuts, which are further evidence of the myopia of the current lot in government and which I suspect will get worse when Brexit begins to bite.

My jacket potato with tuna and salad garnish kept my tummy from rumbling the rest of the afternoon and helped me get through two hours of meetings in the afternoon with my departmental heads, including Cuttleforth, who was noticeably quiet throughout. When I was asked about training budgets, I said we had very little because that was how I’d made the two per cent cuts, Cuttleforth actually defended me by asking how many departments had lost staff. When the answer came back as zero, he asked which was more important to them. The grumblers then became rather quiet. Tom had obviously made an impression on my colleague during their meeting. But the truth is, much of the time I feel more like a manager than a scientist. If I said anything to Tom he simply tell me, ‘I wisnae much o’ a scientist tae begin.’

In my mind I challenged him, “I ran your bloody survey for all these years, doesn’t that make me a scientist?”

“No, thae key word is ran, ye managed it f’ me. That mak’s ye a manager no a scientist.”

“But you gave me a PhD for it.”

“No I didnae, ye got one f’ analysing the survey, which is science.”

In reality, he’d probably tell me something like that yet I knew from my original time with him, that Mary, you remember the one who tried to cut me and stabbed him and was shot as a consequence, told me that Tom offered me the MSc to keep me because he considered I was a good field scientist and he liked my work with dormice. He rarely says anything to my face except to tease me about my work, but the fact that I seem to progress in his university must show he has some confidence in me. Esmond Herbert at Sussex, seemed to think he did and it was through Herbert that I went to see Tom, or to hear him give a lecture. It was on Squirrels and I pointed out some flaws in his methodology and field results.

“And ye cud dae better, I suppose?” he responded.

“Probably, why?”

“Ye’d better come and show me then.” That challenge got me enrolled on a Master’s course which once I’d got I could teach, which was his apparent intention. He wanted someone to teach field studies and some ecology. The rest is history, as they say.