The potato was delish, with oodles of tuna–so my mercury levels should be up to scratch, and the salad garnish was excellent; almost equivalent to a side salad. I washed it down with a ginger beer, which woke me up.

Then came the bad news: I got to the door of the pub and it was precipitating down! The car park looked like a scene from a movie on the life of Noah. I stood for a few minutes deciding whether to risk a paddle to the car, or to borrow a boat and row across.

A new customer came dashing in and I stood aside for her, “Crikey, it’s absolutely pis…Oh hello,” she said. “God, look at me, I’m soaked and I only crossed the car park.”

“I’m going to do the reverse. I do have waterproofs.”

“You should be okay then.”

“Not quite, they’re, erm, in my car.”

“Ah, not so good.”

“No, it isn’t.” I went back to the lounge bar and ordered a coffee. I had my rucksack with me, my money was in it, so was my laptop. Well it’s actually a notebook, so it’s a lightweight lappie. I sat down and began working on it, hoping that my GPS was accurate in positioning of the traps.

I wondered about the safety of leaving them overnight if the weather was going to remain bad. Driving to and from home was going to be a real pain. I booked into a room in the pub. I keep a spare pair of socks and knickers in my rucksack. If it stopped raining, I’d nip to the corner shop in the village and buy some toothpaste and a brush.

At tea time, it did stop raining briefly, and I got my stuff from the car and my toiletries from the corner shop, I bought some deodorant and a face cloth. The landlord showed me up to my room, it was above the skittle alley–not the best place for an early riser, they had a match that evening. Skittles is nine pin bowling, without all the high tech equipment.

It can be great fun unless you’re trying to sleep, which was my case. I’d found a wi-fi link and dealt with some emails; for a laugh, I sent some webcam pictures of myself dancing about in my underwear to Simon. Did I mention it has a webcam in the lid of the notebook?

It isn’t advisable to show the response I got from him, save to say I nearly wet myself when he said he was in great discomfort in his office–they were working late–and he was trying to avoid letting anyone else see either his computer screen or the tent in his pants.

Just to help him along, I then did a slow striptease removing my bra, giggling like a loony, when he sent me a message to tell me to stop because his bank would lose even more money, or he might also lose something else in his trousers.

I lay on my bed in the hotel room, the rain was back and despite the long days, it was dark before eight. I watched the television but nothing held my interest and I nodded, only to be awoken by a rumbling sound and the clonk of skittles being knocked down. It was eight and the match could go on for another two or three hours. The rumble-crash noise was made worse by the shouts and cheers of the players. Maybe I should have gone home?

It all stopped eventually and I did sleep. My phone awoke me at five and outside my door was a tray with a continental breakfast laid out on it. I washed and putting my hair back in a ponytail dressed and breakfasted.

I was out by six and approaching the place I parked at last time. It wasn’t raining now, but everything was sodden and dripping, and the paths were under an inch or more of water. My boots were supposedly waterproof as were the gaiters, so between that and my Barbour, I would be pretty dry. I pulled on my rucksack and shoved on my hat, and off I set.

I sploshed my way to the coordinates I’d set for the traps, and found the first of the red strings. Ten paces and there it was. I did wonder if anything in there could have drowned, then remembered they had holes drilled in the bottoms of the traps in case of rain or incontinence.

There was nothing in the first one, so I removed it and hung it with a bit of string to the rear of my backpack. Trap two was more difficult to get at and I swore as water ran down my arms and into my sleeves. Some days I love my job, sadly this wasn’t one of them.

With enormous difficulty, I got the trap and disentangled it from the branch to which I had previously lashed it. I was now cold and wet from my arms and beyond. I peeked in the trap before it joined the other and to my delight something moved inside it.

It could be anything, a mouse, a rat, even a weasel or a squirrel. It could have trapped itself yesterday afternoon or first thing in the morning. So, to play safe, you open the trap over a special plastic bag and the contents can be viewed safely.

Despite the wetness spreading around my chest from my armpits, my bra now felt damp, I momentarily forgot everything in the excitement of the hunt. I tipped, what was probably a mouse or squirrel into the bag. Suddenly the day brightened, at least in a metaphorical sense as Muscardinus avellanarius fell into the bag. All of a sudden, it was all worth while.

I weighed her–it was a female, and recorded it, I also popped her in a small box and photographed her, sometimes they have distinguishing marks. It didn’t so I snipped off a tiny bit of fur from her right front leg so I would recognise her again. Having done all I needed to, I released her and gave myself the rest of the day off. It was raining hard before I got back to the car.

The drive back to Bristol was miserable, the motorway was awash with spray and at times it was like driving through a thick net curtain. Even with lights on it was difficult to see the car in front and I expected mine were just as bad for the car behind me. I was wet and tired, and even the elation of finding one of the target species wasn’t enough to keep my spirits up. By the time I got home, some two hours later, I was very tired and quite down. It was still raining when I came through the front door. I ignored the post other than to pick it up, and put it on the hall table, I ran upstairs after taking off my coat and stripping off jumped into the shower and warmed myself up.

I had a very late lunch and called Bristol University to set up a meeting. I now needed assistance to map that part of the site and install nest boxes for the dormice. It would complicate my return to Portsmouth, but once I’d shown them what to do, they could feed back results to me which I would collate for the uni.

Over the next week, things were very busy. The weather stayed dry and I managed to collect a group of three undergrads and teach them what I needed them to do. They were bright kids, so I only had to show them about a thousand times–duh! Finally, they seemed to understand and I hoped they wouldn’t kill too many dormice. The university had the required items of kit, including image intensifiers, so we did some night manoeuvres as well.

Between us we surveyed the other two sites and all we found was secondary evidence, nibbled acorns and hazel nut shells, which indicated they’d been there but weren’t necessarily there now. It happens most of the time. We had one active site, so that was important and three students had the beginnings of some data for their dissertations and a quick grounding in fieldwork–something they only did in theory and very superficially; a matter they would take up with the biology department.

Simon arrived on Friday and we had a pleasant weekend together. I needed another week here to sort out the study in the Forest of Dean, then I could go back to Portsmouth. Tom was urging me to come back, they had recovered the cages and had a promise of four dormice from Cheshire, where they also had a captive breeding programme. I began to think, they really did want me back.

The week became a fortnight and I took my father’s old car down to Portsmouth to take my stuff back in one go. The Mondeo felt huge against my Golf, but it went well and I had remembered to re-license it in my name as owner. The tax disc had come back through the post and I was able to take it out for a test drive and then a service before going back to Tom’s.

That Friday night, I arrived at Tom’s house and Simon followed me into the house. He’d kept me abreast of any news on Stella, so I wasn’t really expecting him to grab me as I walked back out to the car. I kissed him and gave him a huge hug. “Hey, babes,” he said hugging me back. “Have you heard the news about Stella?” His face grew serious and my stomach flipped.