The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2463 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

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Talk about rain, it was lashing down, barely taking time to do so. If you recall, I’ve borrowed the music department’s recording studio to do some voice-overs on the harvest mouse film. I’m meeting Alan at the studio, once I manage to swim across the driveway and get in my car. I dunno about the rain in Spain, but it sure can pee down in Pompey.

Handbag on one shoulder, laptop case in that hand and keys in my other, I dashed across the seemingly endless distance to the car bleeping the door to unlock as I ran. I had my Barbour waxed jacket on and a hat so I suppose I wasn’t going to get that wet. I also had my red boots—yeah, still got them, though they’ve been soled and heeled numerous times. I guess I have a nostalgic attachment to them given as they were donated to me by Stella on our first meeting, you know the one, where she not only dragged me out of the closet, so to speak, handed me half of hers, then locked mine so I had to stay out and Catherine Watts became a real person, not just a figment from my dreams.

The temperature had fallen recently from the balmy days we’d had in September, but then it is October and it is autumn—you know leaves fall off trees and clog up drains, so when it rains we get flooding. There was loads of surface water as I drove to the music department, some of it I’m sure from flooding and blocked drains. Any idea why they call them plane trees—I’ve never seen one fly, so it can’t be that.

I’d left the family to organise itself. Those who were up by eight had breakfast with me, otherwise it was up to the supposed grown ups to get their own brekkies because I was gearing up to avoid the deluge which was inevitable given the black clouds and feeling that it was going to rain imminently. Occasionally we seem in sync with our planet, but not very often—oh and I had heard the forecast on the radio as I boiled the kettle and made Julie and me, a cuppa. Then Mima had appeared as did Jacquie, Phoebe was doing her makeup in the hall mirror and nearly poked herself in the eye when the lightning flashed.

“I don’t like thunder and lightning,” she complained.

“Oh I do,” said Julie, “nature’s own fireworks.”

“It can kill you.”

“Oh come off it, Pheebs, that’s so remote it’s not even calculable.”

“There was the guy in the States who was struck three times.”

“That would have to be in the States,” Julie rolled her eyes and I snorted tea.

“Yeah, well he died in the end.”

“After being hit by lightning three times, I’m not surprised.”

“He didn’t die from lightning strike,” I contributed, “he killed himself. He reckoned the lightning gave him some sort of depression.”

“How d’you know that?” asked Phoebe, seemingly impressed.

“I saw it in the Guinness book of records, I think.”

“How did he get struck three times?” Julie asked nibbling some toast, “Did he work on top of a skyscraper?”

“No, he was a ranger in a national park, so I believe.”

The conversation ended when Phoebe and Julie left in Julie’s car to open the salon. Mine ended when I dashed for my car to go to the university. Alan had somehow beaten me there, he’d driven fifty or sixty miles, I done two or three. However, he wasn’t trying to breastfeed while applying mascara—it tends to slow one down, especially when the monster suckling gives a bite then giggles. Peculiarly, I didn’t find it funny.

There is a kitchen off the studio behind a soundproof door, so while Alan did the technical stuff setting up the equipment, I made coffee. While we drank it, we viewed some of the roughs and considered the dialogue I’d written for how I conceived them. I was pleased that we agreed the majority was usable.

Making documentaries is not just about giving information, it’s about entertaining first and foremost, the educational bit is incidental. I could imagine after my dormouse film, some bloke down the pub telling his mate, “You know that dormice sleep half their lives, ya know, ’ibernate like.” When his mate asks how he knows that, his reply, “Some bint on the telly last night, nice legs, she said so—she’s a professor or summat down Pompey university.” His mate then exclaims, “Geez, what they want a university in Pompey for?” I’ll leave you to answer his question, but the education i.e. the giving of knowledge which is partly or wholly assimilated, slips in while they don’t notice. He didn’t notice I’ve got nice tits and bum, according to Simon I have, so who am I to argue?

I read my script while watching the relevant clips and Alan recorded it, then we watched a couple of clips together with the rough voice-over which Alan would tidy up in his own studio adding natural sounds like birdsong and so on.

We stopped for lunch having done the last one and then sat and watched the whole thing. I thought it was awful, he thought it was very good. Oh well, he’s the one who has to make it work, I just get the plaudits and the university soaks up the reflected glory and basks in it. It will also mean that we’ll have higher numbers of students applying to do ecology than any other university in England. Tom calls it the Cathy factor, I think it’s due to teenagers not understanding that it’s more than standing around in sunlit fields watching harvest mice, or walking through woodland juggling dormice, so they apply to do an easy degree. It’s my job to disabuse them of that and then make it easy by giving them the tools to do it.

Education is really about giving people knowledge and skills and having them integrate and use them. So I show them how to find dormice, surveying we call it. Confirmation comes from setting up tubes and finding nesting material in them. Finally, assessing the populations comes from putting up nest boxes and checking them regularly, helped these days by micro-chipping individual animals, weighing them and analysing the data you collect over a period—usually the longer the better. If you then understand what is happening, taking in variables like weather or human activity, you’ve learned something and we give you a degree if you can prove it to us. See it’s easy really—we just give ’em away for counting dormice—no wonder my courses are popular.

After clearing up we drove home where David had made a casserole for lunch—actually, he made it the day before and it was in the slow oven in the Aga. It was bliss on a plate—no I said bliss...