The best Christmas ever!

Mary Dunwich writes:

Oh, I do like Magdalen College! I'm so glad I have finally had a chance to look round it. I tried to pretend I wasn't really that impressed, saying that it all looked a bit antiquated compared to my old Alma Mater, the University of Harrogate. But I have to admit I envy the students who get to spend time in those lovely old buildings. You can just stand there and feel yourself getting smarter.

The staff are lovely too, though not as old. Doctor Roisin Brack is really very pretty, tall and slim with auburn hair and freckles. I can see why Harry is so taken with her. He was even talking to her over lunch, and although the phrase "chatting her up" might be going a bit far, he was definitely responding to her questions and even volunteering bits of information about himself (mostly about his student days at Cambridge).

After lunch we went for a walk around the grounds. Lucy, Briony, Sam and Calvin all showed us around, and we had a good look at the earth around the fritillaries and in the rose beds. The painty footprints had washed away and we couldn't find any more clues, but it was still nice to be poking about in the park. We gave the kids a Fruit Shoot and a bag of chocolate coins each for their help in hunting for Dodgson, and Charlie presented them each with a jar of his Christmas Cranberry pickle for their parents.

To round off the afternoon we were invited to afternoon tea in the psychology department. Charlie, who doesn't really do small talk, excused himself and took Minnie off for a Museum crawl. Harry, having made a date with Roisin to go to a New Year's Eve party in the College, disappeared in the direction of the Computing Department. I was left with James to meet the members of the Psychology Department. Mrs Brith, who is the wife of one of the senior lecturers and also Briony and Sam's mum, had baked a big plum cake, so we all sat down and had a slice with a cup of tea in Dr Brack's office.

Over tea I got to meet the Great Man himself, the Professor. To tell the truth I was so overstimulated by that point that I don't remember much about him, although he seemed very nice. He even lent me a copy of his book, "Schizotypy: implications for illness and health". He said there was a test for schizotypy in it, and it wasn't designed to work on children, but I could go through it and measure how schizotypal I am.

The department use the term "healthy schizotype" for people with schizotypal characteristics but no signs of actual insanity. It's not a very apt name, sounding as it does like a contradiction in terms, like calling someone a "healthy cancer patient". I suggested an alternative term. I was told that, sadly, the term "madder than a bucket full of frogs" is unlikely to be accepted by the wider academic community unless sufficient experiments were performed on frogs to determine exactly how mad they are. The university wouldn't like to be seen to be performing unorthodox and possibly cruel frog research. I suggested "madder than a box full of hair" as an alternative (even the Animal Rights Movement don't fight for the rights of hair), but the Prof. said it would really be very difficult to establish empirically the madness level of even James' hair. So I told him that in that case he would jolly well have to think up his own terminology and he said he'd keep thinking about it.

We were joined by a fascinating little lady who didn't seem to belong to the psychology department at all, but who had expressed a desire to meet us. No taller than James, she spoke English perfectly but with an accent. She introduced herself as Catherine D'Urbanville, a language student from the Universiteit van Amsterdam. D'Urbanville? Sounds a bit Thomas Hardy to me. Maybe her real name is unpronouncable unless you're Dutch.

Catherine declined the cake and tea. "What I would really like," she said, "is a Fruit Shoot and a Mars Bar. Do you have any?" Puzzled, I opened the goody bag and handed her a drink and a chocolate bar. She smiled. "My great-great- (and a few more greats) grandfather Jan de Banweel used to love these!" she said. "He wrote about them in his log. I'll keep these as souvenirs if you don't mind."

I thought about this for a while. Catherine was older than your average student, late twenties maybe. She looked arty, and madder than a...I mean like a healthy schizotype. Was she actually insane? In Oxford University it would be difficult to tell. What would you use for a basis of comparison?

"Was Jan de Banweel a sailor?" I asked at last.

She smiled again. "That's right!" she said. "He was a Commandeur in the Dutch Navy. He sailed all over the Dutch East Indies. There was no-one in the Dutch fleet that could match his navigational skills throughout the seventeenth century."

I nodded thoughtfully. "He must have had a really accurate timepiece," I said.

She nodded. "It bacame an heirloom, passed down from father to son in my family for over a century. I would show it to you now but it leaked acid in the mid eighteenth-century and so my great-grandfather threw it away. We only have a picture of it left. It looked like a modern-day boys' watch, like the one your son is wearing!"

We all looked at James' Swatch. Then we all looked at Catherine. "Wow!" I said at last. "Any chance of having my mobile phone back?"

"Sorry," she replied. "I have no idea what happened to that. Jan didn't have much use for it, so he didn't keep it."

"Ah well," I sighed. "You can't win them all. Did you know Jan gave James a dodo in exchange for the watch and the snacks?"

Catherine laughed. "Of course! Jan wrote about that in his journal too. It's one reason I wanted to come to Oxford. I wanted to paint a dodo and I thought it would be a good place to get some inspiration."

She explained that she has an assignment to paint a series of murals inspired by British children's fantasy stories, so she jumped at the chance to spend a term on an exchange to Oxford for the Carroll, Tolkien and Lewis vibe.

"And did you find inspiration here?" I asked. Catherine gazed out of the window and smiled dreamily.

We had finished our tea and cake by this point and it was getting late. "Well, I suppose we'd better be making a move. It was a pleasure to meet James' sailor friend's descendant, " I said.

"Before you go I have a present for you," said Catherine. "It's in the porter's lodge. You can pick it up from there on your way out to your car."

We gathered together our coats and bags, said our goodbyes and wandered over to the porter's lodge to claim our present. It turned out to be a wooden crate with holes in the lid and a large envelope attached to the box with string.

I opened the envelope. Inside was a pencil sketch of a dodo, beautifully drawn, and a card with name and address in Amsterdam. I examined the picture very carefully. The dodo was wearing a collar.

I prodded at the box cautiously. It stirred.

"Doo-doo!" said the box.

"Dodgson!" we cried.

Carefully, ready to grab him if he made another dash for it, we opened the box. We looked at the dodo. He looked in excellent shape, although an hour or so spent in a tea chest had done nothing for his temper. He glared at us with an injured expression. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"Our birdy's back!" shouted James. "This is going to be the best Christmas ever!"

I nodded, too happy to speak. This was the best present I could have asked for. The whole family, together again for Christmas.

"Gods bless us every one!" said (not-so-tiny) Jim.


Mary Dunwich is on holiday now until the New Year.

An interesting invitation

E-mail from Dr Brack, Department of Psychology, Magdalen College. Monday.

Dear Mrs Dunwich and family.

Thank you for your e-mail, and also for the cheque for £2.50 and for the jars of home-made "Death Pickle". It caused quite a stir at the Departmental Christmas dinner!

You clearly have taken the subject of schizotypy to heart and you have many interesting questions about it. What a pity you were not able to come up to Oxford to visit the college with your husband and son on the day of the study.

Would you like to come up to look around the college and meet some of the staff? We can answer your questions and perhaps give you some further reading material on our schizotypy research. You can also look around the grounds and the Deer Park for traces of Dodgson yourself, and satisfy yourself that everything possible is being done to find him. Would you, your husband and your children all be free for 12pm on Monday 22nd? Your husband should remember where to find us. Perhaps you could invite Harry too?

Your sincerely,

Dr Roisin Brack.

E-mail to Oxford

E-mail from Mary Dunwich to Dr Roisin Brack, Department of Psychology, Magdalen College, Thursday.

Dear Dr Brack, Professor C. and anyone else who understands this schizotypy malarkey,

Thank you very much for your kind and noble efforts to find Dodgson. It sounds from your findings that he has been captured and is at this moment being held, possibly against his will, for purposes unknown but possibly related to Art. I can only hope that his captor is looking after him properly and will release him unharmed. Christmas morning won't be the same without his expectant little face at the patio doors.

I am sending you a cheque to cover your expenses with the dodo-hunt, plus four jars of Death Pickle for the grown-ups. Don't ask what's in it, but it's very good in cheese sandwiches.

Please could you tell me how one measures schizotypy to determine where one is on the spectrum. Also, have you done any work on schizotypy in children?

By the way, Harry is very fond of Chinese food, in case you might need that information for your files.

With festive greetings,

Mary Dunwich and family.

Traces of Dodo

E-mail from Doctor Brack, Department of Psychology, Magdalen College.
Monday.

Dear Dunwich family,

Rest assured the search for your family pet carries on into the holidays.

This weekend we brought out our secret weapon in the hunt for Dodgson. The academic staff brought their children in for a Dodo-hunt. Lucy (age 7 and a half), Briony (age 9), Sam (age 10) and Calvin (aged 11) were all heavily bribed with Mars Bars (which I trust will come out of the reward offered) and set to hunting. The results were very promising, and demonstrated that motivated primary-school children can outperform Oxford undergraduates who've been celebrating Christmas early.

The findings of the team may be summarised as follows:

One feather, large and grey, similar to a pigeon but larger. We have sent it to the Biology Department who has said that they are currently busy, but they will look at it after their Christmas dinner.

One bed of hardy perennials, trampled and pecked, with the surrounding soil much scratched and disturbed. Possible evidence of roosting by a large bird.

One of the art studios reported by cleaning staff to be "messy, with a funny smell".

Footprints, as of a largish bird, on the path leading from this art studio. Traces of paint, possibly guache, on the prints.

We have accordingly put up some of your "Wanted!" notices around the art department and rewarded the intrepid hunters with four Fruit Shoots.

Thank you for sending me Harry's full name, address, phone number, mobile phone number, e-mail address, star sign and favourite topics of conversation.

Wishing you all the best in the festive season,

Dr Roisin Brack.

Mary writes a song

Sunday.
Mary Dunwich writes:

I have spent most of the weekend sitting by the phone and worrying about Dodgson. It's very nice of the psychology department at Magdalen College to be putting so much effort into looking for our dodo, or rather compelling their students to spend their last days of term looking for him, but term ended on Friday and he has not reappeared. If he is still roaming wild in the deer park in this weather then I fear for his health. On the other hand, the porter who followed his tracks is convinced that he has been captured by person or persons unknown. Doctor Brack is sanguine that no undergraduate would harm him (other than feeding him on the normal undergraduate diet of beer and kebabs). As the undergraduates have now presumably all packed their bags and gone home for Christmas, I am worried that whoever has him may have more in mind than a mere undergraduate prank.

To take my mind off my poor little kidnapped dodo I bought a copy of Professor Claridge's book, "Personality and Psychological Disorders" and have started reading it. What I think I have understood so far is the following:

- All of us have a particular personality type;

- Our personality type predisposes us, under certain circumstances (like stress), to a particular form of mental illness.

In other words, we are all on a spectrum, with normality at one end and the insanity of our choice at the other. As to which personality type we are, that seems to be a matter of genetics. Whether we ever become insane ("personality disordered" or even "mentally ill"), that seems to depend on the kind of upbringing that we have experienced.

I studied the list of personality disorders with interest. I could think of at least one member of my family who seemed to personify each one. "Schizotypal" sounds the best fit for James and me. It's a bit worrying to see this described as being "on the schizophrenia spectrum", as I'm pretty sure that schizophrenia isn't a very pleasant thing to have. I really don't fancy a stretch as an inpatient in St Isaac's psychiatric hospital. I therefore read the next bit of the book with great attention.

It said: "in moderate amount the underlying traits predisposing to schizophrenia are perfectly adaptive features of personality; in the same way that mild anxiety traits can be beneficial."

Ooh! So you can be madder than a bucket of frogs (I don't think the good professor uses this actual phrase, but it is clearly what he is driving at) and yet, at the same time, perfectly normal. Have I got this right?

Further on I read: "...fully dimensional theorists have made considerable use of the notion of 'healthy schizotypy' to denote (perhaps the majority of) individuals who are high on the dimension but who show no evidence of illness...".

I considered briefly the idea that fully dimensional theorists meant fat academics. Then I wondered how you knew if you were high on the schizotypy dimension. It sounds like a line from a Hawkwind song.

"I'm ridin' on the schizotypy dimension, (boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-boom)
My eccentricity is manifest
My magic powers are worth special mention
And the Men In Black want me for tests.

I don't get out to parties, cos I have social anxieties,
I hang with the ghosts and the ghouls and the goblins
And I can even talk to my dead gran.
Though she can't get down like the Devil can.

I look like a freak, people call me a geek
They tell me that my head is in the middle of next week
But who needs the sane when I've got the voices in my brain
And my old gran can party like it's 1949

So bring your voices round to my place,
Summon the pixies and the Devil and the elves
We'll all ride high on our schizotypy
Cos these freaky traits are all a healthy part of ourselves

Oh yeah".

News from Oxford

Wednesday.

E-mail from the Department of Abnormal Psychology, Magdelen College:

Dear Dunwich family,

Thank you for your kind e-mails. Professor Claridge is tied up in a conference all this week, so he has asked me to reply to you.

Rest assured we are mustering the forces of Magdalen College to find Dodgson. We have had all the first-year psychology students searching the grounds. We called it a teamworking exercise. The second-year psychology students observed their behaviour and are writing it up as coursework. We are hopeful that there might be some results worth publishing!

We have been careful to keep the first-years away from the area where Dodgson was last seen, as they cannot track for toffee. One of the porters is Akela of a local scout pack, and is considered to be a pretty mean hand at orienteering. He has examined the soil around the fritilliary beds and says that the bird tracks meet some boot-prints and then disappear. He believes that Dodgson may have been caught and carried away. If students have him they will almost certainly return the bird by the end of this week, it being the end of the Michaelmas term, the students will be going back home and will find it hard to take him home and feed him over Christmas. If he was taken by our students he should be well cared for, as they are not in general unkind to animals. He will mostly be in danger from junk food poisoning and intoxication, especially if the first-years have got him!

We will put up your posters and will let you know as soon as we have any news. If we catch Dodgson ourselves we have agreed to share the reward equally among the academic staff of the department, although several of us fancy the plastic dog poo so it could turn nasty!

We are pleased that you find our work on schizotypy interesting. The Professor's book: "Personality and Psychological Disorders" is perhaps the best starting point for the lay person, followed, if you can find it, by "Schizotypy: Implications for illness and health."

Do you perhaps have contact details for your friend Harry? We seem to have mislaid his application form.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Roisin Brack.

James offers a reward

Tuesday
Mary Dunwich writes:

The boy's science project was due in today, so Charlie and Harry loaded their space-time travel module into the back of the our and drove it for them to Bouncing Bunnies Primary School. They also took in their written work (mostly designs for the modification of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, thought up by the ever-inventive mind of the late Professor Albert Einstein, whose spirit my son has been channelling all through this school term).

The boys are not in a happy mood since their key piece of evidence for time-travel, the dodo which they brought back from the seventeeth century, had it away on his little toes and was last seen in the spacious and historic grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford. They took the rather less convincing seventeenth century dead black rat (from the Great Fire of London, you could see the singe marks on his fur if you looked really hard), and some very wobbly footage of Granny Dunwich's sitting room from the nineteen sixties, taken using Jay's mobile phone.

Miss Bannock was not entirely impressed with the boys' efforts. She admired the aesthetics of the travel module (the Christmas fairy lights do really look very good on it), but as they couldn't get it to work she didn't really get the full-on time machine experience. Harry thinks the wireless LAN installed in the classrooms was emitting a damping standing wave field. I suspect that the panel of switches that got knocked off the contraption as they heaved it into the boot may have had some critical function. Either way, once in the classroom under the bemused gaze of Miss Bannock, it refused to budge so much as an inch (or a second). It was all very disappointing for Stanley, Jay and James. Miss Bannock liked the write-up however, and gave them a C+. That's not bad for a project that shows no sign of working, ever having worked, or ever becoming capable of working in the future. It's better than James got for his frog-stretching machine, and that even worked!

James came home in a bad mood and wrote out a reward notice for Dodgson. I sneaked a peak at it before he e-mailed it off to the psychology department at Magdalen College. It said:

"Missing: one Dodo! (Raphus cucullatus)

Height: one metre
Weight: 20 Kg (podgy)
Colour: light grey
Feet: Yellow
Beak: Long and curved
Tail: White and fluffy
Wearing: tartan dog-collar

Answers to the name of Dodgson. If you find him, please keep him warm, give him some pigeon food and a bowl of water and ring us on the number on the collar. Or you can contact the Psychology Department at Magdalen College because they know who we are.

He also likes Maltesers.

Reward for information leading to return: 10 Mars Bars, 3 Fruit Shoots, 32p, a champion conker and a plastic dog poo."

Mary writes an e-mail

Mary Dunwich writes:

I see that James has been writing e-mails from my account again. At least this time he's not channelling dead scientists who then pretend they are me. Still, I suppose I should write myself. I can't have Professor Claridge and this lady doctor thinking we're all a bunch of loonies.

E-mail from Mary Dunwich to the Psychology Department, Oxford University. Monday.

Dear Professor Claridge and Dr Brack,

Thank you for showing such kindness to my son and his friends on Saturday. I do apologise if they were any bother. Caffeine, sugar and Oxford's dreaming spires are a heady combination for my son's brain and I fear his imagination may have become a little overheated.

Of course our family pet is not a dodo, they are extinct as we all know. Dodgson is a Madagascan Racing Turkey, a breed much admired in the turkey fancy as they are extremely fast on their toes. They have to be in Madagascar to avoid being eaten. Racing turkeys are not often seen in this country, however they not at all wild, endangered or extinct. Far from it. We are all very fond of him and the children miss him terribly.

By the way, I have been reading up with great interest on your work on healthy or sane schizotypy. I had never before realised that it was possible for a person to be as mad as pants without actually being mad. Unfortunately there is very little material available to the layperson. Have you written any books on the subject? In particular I would like to know how you can tell if a person is a healthy schizotype. Is there some sort of test you can do? Does it involve needles or electricity? Our friend Harry, who took part in your study on Saturday, says that you just asked him to fill in a questionnaire. I don't hold with science that uses questionnaires to measure things. I studied proper science and we used lasers and thermometers and such like. But I suppose it's a bit harder with brains.

If you do find Dodgson, please give us a ring (the number is on his collar) and my husband will come up to collect him. He can be fed pigeon food or most kinds of cereals but I really don't approve of him having chocolate because I'm sure all that sugar must be bad for his beak.

Thank you once again,

Yours sincerely,

Mary Dunwich.

James writes an e-mail

E-mail from James Dunwich to the Department of Psychology, University of Oxford, Sunday.

Dear Mr. Professor Claridge and Lady Doctor Brack (my mate Harry fancies you!)

Thank you for giving me and my friends tea and plum cake it was very nice. I'm sorry I couldn't show you my dodo because he escaped and is in the wild in your shrubbery near the fritillaries. Thank you for promising to send your students out searching for him. Please tell them his name is Dodgson he is wearing a tartan collar with his name on it you can't miss him. He likes to eat pigeon food and Maltesers. When you find him please keep him warm because he is from Mauritius it is a hot place and his little feet feel the cold.

Yours respectfully James "The Ghost Whisperer" Dunwich.

PS I thought you were an Abnormal Professor because you aren't dead yet but Dad says that's not true. I thought you had to be dead to be a professor because all the professors I know died years ago. Albert says he has done his best work post-mortem because he doesn't get students coming up and asking him silly questions any more.

Dodgson unbound

Mary Dunwich writes:

Saturday.
Charlie and James set off bright and early for Oxford, with Dodgson sulking in his dodo carry-box in the car boot. Minne went to the Higgs-Bosons to bake mince pies with Olivia. I was left on my own to explore LingQ's Russian library and fill my mp3 player with files of beginners' Russian.

It was tea-time when the travellers returned. Charlie looked exhausted and James was gibbering quietly.

""Did Harry get to Magdalen all right?"" I asked, pouring Charlie a cup of tea.

"Oh, Harry was fine," answered my husband, coming to the table. "We dropped him off for 10 a.m. and went off to the Science Museum to check on Albert's blackboard. He found he'd got his equations right so he was happy. We went back for Harry at 1p.m. and it looked like he'd had a great time. There was this pretty psychologist talking to him and he was staring at her feet. He looked pretty keen on her."

Wow, sounds like my boy's finally discovered girls. What am I saying? I've gone from fancying Harry to thinking I'm his mother. I hastily changed the subject.

"Who was in charge? Did you meet them?" I asked, sitting James down and handing him a scone.

"It was one of their professors. Claridge I think," answered Charlie, sitting down and taking a sip of tea. "He and the boys really hit it off. He spent ages talking to them."

"He's an Abnormal Professor. I suppose it's because he's a professor and he's not dead, " said James, his eyes slightly unfocussed. He was really interesting! He gave us tea. I had three cups with sugar and two slices of cake!"

"No, he's a normal professor of Abnormal Psychology", responded Charlie with the air of a man who has explained this several times already on the drive home.

"Yeah. We told him all about Albert, and building the time machine, and going back to the seventeenth century and trying to meet Guy Fawkes. He was really interested! He said he wanted to see a dodo, so I went to get Dodgson out of the car."

"Good Lord!" I spluttered through a mouthful of tea. "What did he say when he saw him?"

"He didn't get to see him," said James sadly. "I had just got Dodgson out of his box and was putting his lead on when he ran away from me. He scooted down the path and hid in a lot of shrubs. I ran after him, but this man ran up and started shouting at me for treading on the fritillaries. I told him I was looking for my dodo but he wouldn't listen. He said I was a yob with no respect for nature or history. By the time he went away Dodgson was nowhere to be found. I left trails of Maltesers over the paths but he wasn't coming for them. I'm never going to see him again!"

His eyes filled with tears. I could feel mine starting to prickle too. Over the last few weeks I've really grown fond of that pudgy little fellow. But I wasn't going to let James see that, and Charlie didn't look like he could handle any more waterworks. I coughed.

"Do you realise what you've done, young man?" I asked sternly. "You have released an extinct wild animal into the grounds of the oldest and most historic university in the world!" (Memo to self, must look Oxford up on Wikipedia some time. I don't know much about Oxford, I'm a Harrogatian myself). "I hope we don't get into trouble for this."

"I hope Dodgson will be alright," muttered Charlie gloomily. "It's getting cold at nights and he's not used to sleeping outdoors."

"I asked the angry man if fritillaries were poisonous to dodos but he didn't answer," added James plaintively.

"Was he wearing his collar?" I asked them. "If anyone finds him they are bound to ring us and let us know." If they don't stuff him, eat him or keep him for themselves, I thought glumly.

"Oh yes," James answered. "And I gave Professor Claridge a full description. He promised to organise a search."

Hunting for a dodo in the grounds of Magdalen College must count as unusual behaviour even by the standards of an Oxford don. Perhaps he is the Abnormal Professor of Psycology after all.

I consider learning Russian.

Mary Dunwich writes:

My daughter informs me that Uzbekistan is "nearly in Russia". I wonder if my student Uri speaks Russian? Maybe he could help me learn it. I rather fancy learning Russian.

I have wanted to learn Russian ever since I realised that my parents distrusted and disliked the Russians. Perversely, this fostered a fascination in me, a desire to learn all I could about this mysterious and devious foreign types. I loved spy films. Foreigners being devious and exotic (and generally rather sexy), wonderful. I've loved learning foreign languages ever since watching the "Ipcress File". My only regret is that no-one's ever tried to brainwash me. Maybe they already have. How would I know?

Mind you, my parents also had little time for the Germans, the French or the Americans. In fact I think they distrusted pretty much everyone, except the the Canadians, the New Zealanders and the Swiss. What the Swiss have ever done to deserve my parents' approval is anyone's guess. It was a Swiss scientist who proved the great Englishman Newton wrong about the way gravity works. Yes Albert, I am looking at you! I suppose you think it's clever.

Oh dear, I've started talking to my son's incorporeal friends now. I hope I'm not coming down with schizotypy. Perhaps I should go and see those psychologists too.

I'm still sulking about missing out on this Oxford trip, so I'm pretending not to be interested in the research study Harry's taking part in. On the quiet I've been thinking about it quite a lot.
I've looked "schizotypy" up on Wikipedia, the fount and source of all knowledge. It has a lot to say, although in quite long words so I shall have to think about it over a pot of tea and a custard cream.

Mmm....

'Claridge' (who's he then?) says that schizotypy isn't 'psychoticism' (that means being mad, I assume), it's being a person who experiences 'unusual experiences', 'cognitive disorganisation', 'introverted anhedonia' and 'impulsive nonconformity'. What's that all about?

I thoughtfully picked at a blob of dodo-poo which had stuck to my trousers. I'd put my clean pair on but I've forgotten where I put them. No-one's going to see what I'm wearing today anyway, apart from the school run I'm not going anywhere and I don't talk to the other parents when I get there.

I wonder if this 'Claridge' is the person in charge of the Oxford research study?

I shall have to ask Harry all about it when he gets back. As long as the Devil doesn't get overexcited and talk to him all the way through his tests. If he's having a one-sock day I'd get more sense talking to James.

Too much Poe and too much poo

Mary Dunwich quoth:

Once upon a teatime dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over a creepy audiobook from Librivox's online store,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my patio door.
"Aargh!" I shouted, jumping sharply, "What the Hell's that? Tapping, tapping,
Tapping at my patio door!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a podgy dodo of the rancid days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, stood and pooed upon my floor.
"Damn!" I swore, "that will take scrubbing! Stoop I must to clean my floor,"
"Lest that stains it evermore."

I've really got to stop listening to all these horror audiobooks, I think they're starting to have an effect on me. Scooping Dodgson up in my arms, I stepped over the pile of dodo-poo and went to tuck him up in his coop for the night.

In which I learn a new word, and fear for James' safety

Mary Dunwich writes:

Question: Why did the dodo cross the road?

Answer: Because my muppet husband forgot to shut the garden gate!

I let Dodgson out to roam about the garden as usual. When I went out to check on him, the gate was open and he was gone. A frantic search later found him over the road in old Mrs Battenburg's front garden. He was roosting in her hardy perennials, trying half-heartedly now and then to reach the crusts on the bird-table (which isn't designed to feed flightless birds).

It took me ten minutes and a lot of bad language to round him up and get him home. Whoever spread the rumour that the dodo was an ungainly bird is a big, fat fibber. They are really surprisingly fast on their toes. Once I flushed him out of the flower bed, he raced around the garden several times at top speed, then zipped back across the road, narrowly avoiding being flattened by a very startled number 27 bus.

All of this put me into a very grumpy mood. I decided to wait until Charlie got home and take it out on him. Some of my troubles were definitely his fault. I was already feeling sorry for myself about missing out on an all-too-rare trip to Oxford, thanks to my son's deceased friend Albert's insistance on a trip to the Oxford Science Museum to check the sums he left on a blackboard on a visit over half a century ago. I really feel that the dead should slow down and get some perspective on their lives. You can't take it with you. Albert seems to be treating death as an extended "Working from Home" day.

"What do you mean by taking the boys to Oxford and leaving me behind?" I demanded as soon as Charlie's foot came through the front door that evening.

"I'm taking Harry to Magdalen College to see the psychology professor," answered Charlie, wearily sitting on the stairs to take off his boots. "They are doing a study on schizotypy, and Harry volunteered to take some tests. You know he won't drive because the Devil keeps telling him to watch his speed and it puts him off."

"Schizotypy? Is that a new word for schizophrenia?" I asked. It's political correctness gone mad, I thought.

"No, schizotypy is a whole range of eccentric behaviours. Schizophrenia just sits on the far end of the spectrum," answered my husband, taking his Dalek lunchbox out of his council briefcase. "We're all schizotypes to some extent or another. Harry's just more extreme than most."

"Are you saying I'm mad?" I asked indignantly. Sometimes you have to work quite hard to pick a fight with Charlie.

Charlie looked at my uncombed hair (I've lost my brush and Minnie's stolen my comb), my unmatched socks and my trousers grass-stained from the dodo-hunt, raised an eyebrow but refused to comment.

I pondered this new idea. Me, a little bit schizophrenic? Surely not. Great-Aunt Fanny, maybe. She was convinced that her neighbour Mr Figgin was a KGB agent sent to spy on her, and that all his junk mail was coded messages from Moscow. Cousin Bertie refuses to wear underpants and talks to the wallpaper. And James.....James is just really creative, okay?

Didn't Albert Einstein's son have schizophrenia? Perhaps there's a fine line between creativity, genius and madness.

"Mmm.....There's still no need to take the boys with you," I grumbled, still reluctant to give up the idea of a fight.

"I thought I might introduce James to the psychologists and see if they want him to sit the schizotypy test," answered Charlie. "You've got to admit, dear, he's not exactly normal. I'd like to know what the professor makes of him."

"I resent that! My boy is completely normal! He's just been misunderstood by people who don't understand how intelligent he really is!" I thundered. "Besides, I wouldn't trust him not to let Albert take the test for him. Having a dead genius sit the test might skew the statistics. Er."

My ears stopped to listen to what my mouth was saying. Maybe channelling the spirit of a dead scientist and travelling back in time is a bit bizarre, even by the standards of an Oxford don. I just hope James doesn't show the professor his dodo. They might want to keep him for further study and not let him come home again. Or the dodo either.

I miss out on an outing

Mary Dunwich writes:

It snowed yesterday. What was that about? It's not supposed to snow in England in November. It must be global warming. Maybe the Gulf Stream has changed course and is plunging Britain into another ice age.

I was cleaning out the dodo and worrying about the weather when my son shambled out to join me. He looked excited and unusually focussed for a Sunday morning.

"We're going to Oxford next Saturday!" He announced. "Harry is taking part in a research study at the University. Dad's going to drive him there. We're all having a day out in Oxford."

"Ah, good!" I answered, emptying my bucket of dodo poo onto the compost heap. It makes a fantastic activator, I'm thinking about selling it on eBay. "I want to go back to that fantastic bookshop that's bigger on the inside than the outside".

I'm a big fan of Blackwells' bookshop. They order Tolkien books in German for me without getting flustered or telling me I should get out more.

"Erm....I don't think there'll be room for you as well," answered James, thoughtfully poking at a worm with my compost-poking stick.

"Why not? Who's going?" I asked, as I started to spread the straw around the floor of Dodgson's coop. Why is it, when the kids get a pet, it's always Mum who ends up cleaning it out?

"Erm....Dad offered to take us to the Oxford Natural History museum with Dodgson," said James. "Dad thinks a real, live dodo is too important to keep to ourselves. He says we should share him with the wider scientific community."

Hmm. I suspect the Werewolf's just got tired of buying bales of straw and economy-size packs of pigeon food. Either that or he's got the wind up about the Endangered Species legislation and doesn't want to risk going to gaol for keeping a proverbially endangered wild animal as a pet. Chicken!

"You can't trust that lot at the Natural History museum!" I objected. "They had a dodo once and look what they did with it! The last known stuffed dodo in history, and those philistines chucked it on the fire just because it looked a bit manky. I wouldn't let them near our little Dodgson." (I've cleaned him out seven times now, I consider I have a part share in him).

"It's got to be done, Mum!" answered James calmly. I hate it when he gets reasonable at me. "We don't know how to care of Dodgson, if he gets sick the vet's bills could be dreadful. Besides, I want to take a picture of the looks on their faces when they see him!"

"Mmmm....." I conceded the point as I refilled Dodgson's food bowl. Still, I wasn't going to give up on a shopping trip without a fight. "So, that's Dad, you, Harry, me and Minnie. We should all fit in the car. Dodgson can go in a dodo box in the boot."

"Stanley and Jay want to come too!" replied James. "It's their school project too! We want to go to the science museum and take pictures of ourselves next to Einstein's blackboard. Albert says he wants to see it again. He has a feeling he made a mistake in the equations and he won't rest easy till he's checked them again."

Great. I have to forego a much-needed outing just because the greatest scientist since Newton is worried he's got his sums wrong. If he has, no-one's noticed it in the last half a century. I really feel that now Albert is.....retired, he should be putting his feet up and not still worrying about his work. You won't catch me tutoring students and cleaning out family pets once I'm dead.

We broaden our minds and reduce our vocabulary

Mary Dunwich writes:

James and his friends have set up a small business! I know this because I have found one of their business cards in James' trouser pocket. It says:

"Bouncing Bunnies Computer Support: all your computer problems fixed. 1 House Point per 15 minutes. Contact James, Jay and Stanley in 6B."

If they are being paid in house points then they must be selling their services to the teaching staff, and raising their popularity with the other kids in their house into the bargain. I'm impressed at their entrepreneurialism. What busy little bees they are!

I have also been a busy bee. I have a second LingQ student now. His name is Uri and he comes from Uzbekistan. He has an impeccable command of the English language, provided he is talking about mining and mineral resources. On any other subject he stammers and dries up. In extreme cases he blames a dodgy Skype connection and hangs up. As my knowledge of mining is even sketchier than my knowledge of cricket, all I can manage to say in our conversations is "Mmm" or "Well, I didn't know that!" It's like listening to James explaining the plot of Doctor Who.

Still, I haven't spent the last four years flirting with Harry the Geek without learning a trick or two for dealing with the socially hesitant. I'll get round Uri, see if I don't. I'll have to think of some interesting questions to ask about Uzbekistan. At present I can think of only one, which is: "Is Uzbekistan a real place?" It sounds exotic and imaginary, like Shangri-La or The Isle of Avalon. If it is real, I have no idea where it can be.

I shall have to set Minnie on the task of finding out about Uzbekistan. Mrs Krumball has been forcing extra geography on my daughter as part of her punishment for her Bonfire Night prank. Astonishingly, Minnie is really enjoying it and has been looking forward to her detentions. She's learned all sorts of things with Mrs Krumball. She has explained to me how it is possible to provide the whole world with electricity by linking the existing power stations to create a world-wide energy grid. That's pretty impressive coming from a seven-year-old.

My ignorance of any event happening beyond my native shores is becoming something of an embarrassment. I know that the world expects the British to be insular, but really, it seems that we are living on a totally different planet from the rest of the world. Even little old ladies living halfway up mountains have more of a grasp of world politics than I do. Well, one little old lady at least. TibetanChick was telling me with great gusto about the impact the new American president was likely to have on Tibetan-Chinese relationships. Considering her limited vocabulary she really can express herself quite graphically. Too graphically for my tastes, I daren't use the speakers during our Skype conversations in case the children are listening.

I'm pleased to say that under my guidance TibetanChick has made some progress with her English. I have convinced her that the "M" word is not acceptable in polite conversation. Or the "N" word. The "B" word is usually used only by working men in moments of great stress. The "V" word I had to look up, the "C" word wasn't even in the dictionary and I think the "Z" word must be in Tibetan. As that's six words she can no longer use in English, I must be the only LingQ tutor to have decreased a student's active vocabulary! I wonder what that's done to her LingQ scores?

Another visit to the Head

Mary Dunwich writes:

I got called into the Head's office again.

It turns out that Minnie had tried to set off some very loud firecrackers at the school's Bonfire Night festivities. Her plot was foiled (much as the original one was) so she then switched the water for the cocoa with the wee collected by the smallest children for use as compost activator. She was spotted by her teacher, Mrs Krumball, and sentenced to two weeks' detention.

"But she didn't actually set the fireworks off," I protested, somewhat feebly. "She put them in a compost heap. That's practically recycling."

Mrs Lunn, who has had all too much experience in dealing with me, picked up her copy of the School's Health and Safety Policy. "On page 32 it states that explosives are not to be brought onto the school premises for any purpose," she pointed out. "On page 52 it states that urine is to be kept in suitably marked containers and used for educational purposes only. Minnie contravened the Policy when she poured a bucket full into the hot water urn. Incidentally, we will be sending you the bill for having the urn decontaminated."

Curses. This woman is too good. "I suppose I have to attend the course on Managing Positive Behaviour again," I said wearily. "I assure you, I already know how to manage positive behaviour. If I ever see my kids behaving positively, I shall deal with it immediately!"

Mrs Lunn sighed. "With Minnie's record I would be quite justified in suspending her from school," she said. "I'd rather not do that. Mrs Krumball believes that Minnie is actually quite a gifted child."

"Gifted at causing trouble, certainly," I countered. "I've never known a child like her."

"Mrs Krumball thinks Minnie is acting up because she is not sufficiently challenged," said Mrs Lunn. "She thinks that she would benefit from extra school activities. Minnie's a very bright girl."

Mmmm.....I suppose it runs it the family. My son has managed to alter the fabric of reality to make time-travel a possibility, built the world's first time machine and travelled backwards in time.

"I suppose she's James's sister," I answered thoughtfully. "I expect she is pretty bright."

Mrs Lunn coughed. "About James," she said. "Miss Bannock asked me to have a word with you. She wanted me to show you some of his recent work."

She handed me an essay entitled "Why we should not be prejudiced". I read it. "The cheeky little...!" I exclaimed. "He's calling me a Vital Supremacist!"

"Er...quite," said Mrs Lunn. "It seems that he's mixing up fact and fiction again. Mrs Bannock says that in an essay entitled "My Family" he claimed to have a pet dodo. That's all very well for creative writing, but James needs to be made to understand that some pieces of work need to be strictly factual."

"Er..yes..." I said, thinking fast. "Creative writing, quite. I think he's using .....erm, satire....to make a point about respecting diversity. And the dodo represents....er....our need to respect the environment or lose important biodiversity. He's quite good at rhetoric, you know."

"Does he still have imaginary friends?" asked Mrs Lunn, putting on her "I'm hear if you need to talk" look.

"Noooo...." I answered. "I believe his friends are all real at the moment."

"Miss Bannock heard him talking to himself at break. She couldn't be sure, but she thought it sounded like German."

"Practising his lines for a play," I said firmly. "In German. Er."

This sounded feeble even to me. Mrs Lunn leaned forward and turned the "concerned and caring" look up a notch.

"You look tired, Mrs Dunwich," she said. "Is everything all right at home?"

"You wouldn't believe the half of what I have to put up with," I answered with perfect sincerity. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go. I have to talk to a Tibetan about her yak."

I made a speedy exit before Mrs Lunn could put me down for the "Meditation: Getting in Touch with the Real You" course as well. What with having to contend with a dodo, TibetanChick, Albert Einstein's ghost and a sock-stealing Embodiment of Evil, I really don't think I have time to talk to the Real Me as well.

An essay on respecting diversity by James

Why we should not be prejudiced by James Dunwich, 6B

The Americans have elected a black man for president for the first time and everyone thinks this is really important because he is not white and so he knows what it is like to not be white. But he is still a man an he is still an American and he is still alive so he does not know what it is like to be not a man and not an American and not alive. I think this shows prejudice against all the people who are not alive American men.

I have a friend called Albert he is postliving and he is very clever. Mum likes men who are clever but only if they are alive. If they are vitally challenged like Albert she just calls them all ghosts and is not interested. I think it is because she does not know what it is like to be differently existing but she will find out one day and then we will see how she likes it! It isn't nice when everyone is prejudiced against you as Albert knows.

Albert says he knows some postliving Native Americans who want to be president but they aren't allowed even though they are American and they aren't nearly as black as the president but they are not alive.

I want to have some differently existing penfriends now I have a new computer and I can talk to them. Mum just wants me to have boring old living penfriends like Alice in Switzerland. I have told my Mum she is a Vital Supremacist and should be ashamed. She is a member of a place called LingQ and you have to be alive or they don't let you join I think it is shameful.

My Mum thinks she is not prejudiced because she likes men and women and black people and white people and all sorts of foreigners. But she is prejudiced because she does not like postliving people. She calls them dead or ghosts or deceased which is just as bad. She thinks they are creepy and they should go back where they came from and not try to talk with living people at all. She treats them worse than slaves although she does not want them to do anything she just wants them to go away and not bother her. Well if differently alive people started chaining themselves to railings and throwing themselves under the Queen's horse it would just serve everybody right.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

Lizzie Higgs-Boson writes:

It is November 5th already! Autumn rolls around again so fast.

I took my children, Stanley and Olivia, to the Primary School for the festivities. (It was too late for little Ivor, so his Dad stayed at home, putting him to bed).

The schoolchildren had made a lovely Guy, very lifelike and completely biodegradeable. The Fire Service have refused to come out to any more school bonfires in Dusty Mouldings, so this year the school has an exciting new twist on the whole "Burning Guy Fawkes in effigy" thing. This year they are composting the Guy instead. They have built a huge compost heap in the corner of the school field and put the Guy on top. It will take about a year for him to rot down, even soaked as he is with wee (which the Reception class, with great gusto, have been collecting). It's not quite the spectacle of a huge bonfire, but the children will be learning important lessons about recycling from it.

We all ate baked potatoes and roasted chestnuts ("Warning! May contain nuts!") , drank hot chocolate and watched the firework display. I thought it was a magnificent show considering the budget the PTA had for it. They can't have paid full retail price for all those fireworks. Someone must have a Cash and Carry card.

Mary didn't come. She objects to Bonfire Night. She says we are celebrating the centuries-long oppression and persecution of members of minority faiths in our country, and that there's no reason to take pride in the memory of a failed regicide and mass-murderer, who the king had tortured and publicly hanged, drawn and quartered.

She did, however, let James and Minnie come with us. Her moral objections don't stand in the way of her children filling themselves with cheap baked potatoes. I made sure first that that rather unnerving young Scottish doctor wouldn't be coming with them. When he showed up on Hallowe'en for the Trick or Treating he hardly said a word, and when he did speak I found him completely incomprehensible. Such a broad Scottish accent, it's surprising the NHS employed him. I don't know how his patients get on with him.

Minnie got into trouble for hiding some rook-scarers in the big compost heap. She was under the impression that they were going to set fire to it. When she realised that all she had done was to get her fireworks all soggy, she tried to switch a bucket of Reception's wee for the water for the hot chocolate. She's going to have a fortnight's detentions for that. Mary won't be happy, she'll have to attend the course on "Managing Positive Behaviour" again.

Meeting interesting people on the internet

Mary Dunwich writes:

My LingQ student has sent me a writing submission to mark! I think it is about yak herding, though it is a little hard to be sure. "TibetanChick" has an English vocabulary of about a hundred and fifty words, at least ten of which are very rude. I think she must have had some contact with the American military at some stage.

Still, her English is a lot more impressive than my Tibetan. Fair play to her for deciding to learn. It just goes to show, there is nothing in the world so dangerous or daunting that a granny somewhere isn't prepared to try it. Go TibetanChick!

James' new computer is certainly an interesting bit of kit. It sprawls over the workbench like an animatronic octopus. I've seen external sound cards, external DVD writers and external speakers before, but this is ridiculous. Most of the components of this computer are external. I'd be surprised if there's anything left inside the casing at all. Many of the components were designed by Harry the Geek, and as they are passive optical components they don't hum and they don't get warm. All they do is emit a faint, eery glow. If H.P. Lovecraft had ever owned a personal computer, it would look like this.

Harry says that his phase-shift photonic transmission system increases the speed of operation of the computer into the realms of Gigahertz, and increases the effective bandwidth of the internet connection to some Terabytes a second. Surely he can't be serious?

Harry also claims he's got Ouija for Windows 6.1 working on it. Apparently it works best with a tweaked version of Windows 98 (or Linux), and with the extra bandwidth you can increase the signal-to-noise ratio to quite reasonable levels. Oh goody. My son is already friendly with one deceased person, and I would prefer him to spend more time amongst the living. Some dead people weren't at all nice. Atilla the Hun, Napoleon, my great-aunt Fanny. I hope the security is sufficient to block out unsolicited messages. I must check the firewall settings before I let him use it.

Harry the Geek comes up with the goods

Mary Dunwich writes:

I noticed this morning that we have a new LingQ member from Mauritius. I wonder if they want their dodo back?

I was pondering on who has the best claim to Dodgson the dodo. James bought him fair and square from a Dutch sailor in the seventeenth century, but unfortunately he didn't think to ask for a receipt.

The Werewolf thinks Dodgson comes under the Endangered Species legislation, which makes it highly illegal for us to be keeping a rare wild animal in a coop in our workshop.

I can't see that an animal that's been extinct for over three hundred years can be considered endangered. It's like putting the Loch Ness Monster on the "species at risk" list.

The Werewolf says that, as Dodgson is alive and well, clearly the Dodo is no longer extinct. There is now a total of one dodo in the world, and that makes him pretty blooming endangered.

I say you would first have to prove that he is a dodo, and as there is very little dodo around (just a dodo foot or something at the Oxford Museum of Natural History) it would be difficult to prove. The court case could drag on for years.

I was just about to look up the UK laws on keeping wild animals on Google when the Werewolf came in, closely followed by Harry the Geek and, by the looks of it, half the stock of Silicon Heaven.

"Did they have everything you wanted?" I asked with interest. Harry has offered to upgrade one of his old computers and give it to James to use for his school work. It's all a bit home-made, but does have the big advantage that he'll let us have it for £30, which is the grand total of my earnings as a LingQ tutor so far.

"Most of it," answered Charlie, putting the vintage computer he was carrying onto the floor. "The Head Anorak was well impressed by Harry. I think he realised he's met his match."

"The wee eijit dinna ken muckle o' phase-shift modulation," said Harry with self-satisfaction.

"Well, who does?" I asked. "Apart from you of course. That's what you did your Master's thesis on, isn't it?"

"Aye," he answered. "Ye can get an exponential increase in bandwidth if ye use passive optical components instead of electronic ones, and use synchronised photon streams. But that wee laddie in the shop had nivver e'en studied at Cambridge. He didna know the furrst thing about it!"

Well, quite. I peered into some of the bags.

"I'm not sure this lot will all fit in James' bedroom," I commented.

"I'm pretty sure it won't," countered Charlie. "It'll have to go in the workshop. I'll rig up an ethernet link while Harry's putting it all together."

"You're going to put out James' computer out in the workshop?" I asked. "Are you sure about this?"

"Do you want to pay £300 for a new computer that will fit in his bedroom?" answered my husband.

Mmm. I would have to work a lot harder at attracting students at LingQ to pay for that kind of technology. At present I only have one student, an elderly lady from Tibet, who chose me as her tutor because she thought that I was a minor member of the Royal family. To earn serious money I would have to act like a serious tutor.

"Well, if you're going to be making a lot of noise drilling I suggest you get started now," I said to Charlie. "Minnie and James have taken Dodgson for walkies in the woods at Sir Isaac's. I don't want a traumatised dodo on my hands. I've told them to be back for one o'clock. Are you staying for lunch, Harry? I'm doing Toad in the Hole and Spotted Dick with custard."

Harry brightened at the thought of a hot meal (I don't think he's at ease with cooker technology). He muttered something about neeps. I'm not comfortable with Scots, but I took this to be a remark about root vegetables. I said I'd see what I could do, and left them both to play.

Trick or Treat!

Mary Dunwich writes:

Hallowe'en, half past seven. The Werewolf was upstairs posting on his increasingly popular music blog. I was in the sitting room having a chat with a German LingQ friend over Skype when the door opened and a strange and sinister group of people (well, mostly people) came in. The tallest one saw that the PC was on and stood mesmerised, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a lorry. The shortest one flapped his wings grumpily and cooed.

I hastily pulled a sock over the webcam. It was that or work out the German for "That weird bunch behind me are a psychiatric outpatient who I have a crush on, my free-thinking kids and a dodo rescued from the seventeenth-century." I didn't think that Reinhard was ready for that kind of information about my life.

I signed off as fast as I politely could and turned to face the shambling, flapping, vacantly staring group.

Minnie was wearing a floral dress, a pink cardigan, thick grey woolly tights, fluffy slippers, and a black leather jacket with "Hell's Grannies!" written over the back in studs. I hope the real Hell's Grannies don't get to hear about this. Relations between the Hell's Grannies and the Knights Hospitalier have been quiet of late, and I wouldn't like my daughter to be the one to break the fragile peace.

James was wearing his usual clothes, minus his socks but plus a baggy grey jumper. He was wearing a grey wig to which he had applied his industrial-strength hair gel, until the hair stuck up at odd angles. Under his arm I saw a small blackboard with curly equations scribbled over it. I guess that his invisible friend, the late Albert Einstein, doesn't mind James dressing up as him for a Hallowe'en joke.

Harry the Geek was wearing a white laboratory coat and glasses. His usually wild hair had been carefully slicked down. There was a stethoscope round his neck and he was carrying a clipboard. I suppose it's not surprising that Harry should have a horror of doctors, his experiences as a psychiatric inpatient at Sir Isaac's sound dreadful.

I glanced down at Harry's ankles. Harry was wearing matching grey socks. Thank the Gods for that! Despite it being his parents' wedding anniversary, with all the emotional stress that that usually implies, Harry was having a good day.

I have become very good at telling Harry's state of mind from his socks. Two odd socks is situation normal. Two matching socks is a sign of particularly good emotional stability. No socks means that the Devil has been giving Harry trouble again. Only one sock is a very bad sign and may cause me to give his care-worker a call.

Dodgson the dodo was wearing a tartan doggy jacket, a collar and a lead. In the dark he might pass for some breed of terrier.

"Get that animal out of my sitting room and into his coop before he ruins the carpet!" I said sternly to my son. James knelt down and started undressing the bird. "What on earth did you take him Trick or Treating for anyway?"

"He was the Trick," answered Minnie smugly. "We kept him behind us. When people chose Trick, we brought Dodgson out and shone a torch under his beak. Some people were really freaked out! We got lots of sweets!" She waved a bulging carrier bag at me.

Oh dear. I wonder what the Vicar's going to have to say about this.

"Weren't you supposed to be Trick or Treating with the Higgs-Bosons?" I asked, making a deft grab for the bags of sweeties. They looked quite sugared-up enough already.

"We started off with them. But there were too many of us so we split up," answered James, scooping the dodo up in his arms. "Besides, Lizzie kept giving Harry funny looks. I don't think she liked the look of him."

"I told her that Harry's a doctor at Sir Isaac's, and he came straight from work without changing," supplied Minnie helpfully. "I don't think she bought it."

Well, that's Lizzie's problem. As long as she considers the schizophrenic heart-throb to be a "responsible adult" then she can't object to my kids going round the neighbour's houses with him.

"Harry, just the man! I need to talk to you about computers," I said switching off the computer, and Harry woke from his trance and grunted in Scots. I was hopeful of geting whole sentences out of him by the end of tea.

"The Hallowe'en supper's ready," I said. "A cauldron full of hot Witches Brew stew with Devil's Dumplings, Dead Men's Finger Rolls, Bat Biscuits, Imp Cakes, Brain Jelly, and Eyeball Ice-cream. Wash your hands first please!"

And a splendidly creepy evening was had by all.

To: The Werewolf, Badger Crossing Planning Unit

Mary Dunwich writes to the Werewolf:

Hello dear! Is your e-mail server down? Well, I figure you look at your blog several times a day, and as our blogs are linked in cyberspace, you'll probably see this message before 5pm.

Lizzie is taking the kids out Trick-or-Treating on Friday. I wondered about inviting Harry round. He could go out Trick-or-Treating with them, while I rustle up a Hallowe'en party tea. You know I don't like the idea of him being at home alone on 31st. It's his parents' wedding anniversary and his family always have a big fight, then ring up Harry and take it out on him. He's better off out terrorising our neighbours than staying in and having his family terrorising him.

Stanley is banned from coming round to our house to do his project. That leaves James short of a computer (I'm not letting him use mine, not after what he did to it last time!It took ages to clean the golden syrup out of the DVD drive.) Perhaps it's time he had a computer of his own? I can afford £30 from my English tutoring earnings. Are they getting rid of any old PCs at the Council that we could get for that? Perhaps Harry knows where we could get James a cheap computer.

Don't forget eggs, milk, yoghurt, a cabbage, bread flour, onions and Fair Trade leaf tea.

xxxx

Adult supervision is required

Lizzie Higgs-Boson writes:

I must say, Mary, I'm getting a little bit concerned about the way Stanley and Jay come back from your house on a Saturday evening with dirt all over their clothes. Last week they came back smelling of wood and tobacco smoke, and the week before they smelled of manure!

I can't get a straight answer about where they have been. Stanley claims that he, Jay and James went to the allotments and were talking to a man who was spreading muck on his fruit bushes, while tending a bonfire and smoking his pipe. Honestly, Mary, do you think it's a good idea letting three eleven-year-old boys roam at will around Dusty Mouldings? The allotments are not a safe place for children, especially not if they start talking to strangers. And to be exposed to the dangers of passive smoking and manure! I only hope Jay keeps quiet about where he has been, because if Kay Bee hears they have been to the allotments she will have a fit. You know how she worries about Jay's safety.

Stanley admits he hasn't written a single word of his project yet, and it's due in on December 1st! What on earth have they been doing at your house all this time??? I think it would be sensible if the boys came round to our house to work on their project from now on. They can use Stanley's laptop to look up facts on the internet and write their project up. We can give them proper adult supervision.

It is Hallowe'en tomorrow and we are taking Stanley and Olivia out Trick-or-Treating after tea. We will be calling for Jay Bee on the way, and James and Minnie can come too if they behave. Please ask Minnie to tone her costume down a bit this year - her Bloody Zombie outfit last year was really very disturbing. The Vicar had a word with me at church the Sunday after. Several elderly parishioners had complained and one had asked for an exorcism.

I am not a Happy Bunny

Mary Dunwich writes:

I am quite seriously cheesed off. There are three main reasons for my discontent. First, I am still feeling poorly thanks to the bug I caught at the "Parents' Whinge" meeting. Charlie calls it "24 hour flu", but I've had it for nearly three days now, and "the three-day sniffles" doesn't sound nearly as impressive. I'm all right as long as stay on the sofa and don't attempt anything more strenuous than making a pot of tea and watching "Young Dracula".

Second, I have lost my new and feature-packed mobile phone. Well, I didn't lose it. My son gave it to a seventeenth-century Dutch sailor with bad teeth and scurvy and a taste for heritage tobacco and rum. I don't suppose he'll have any more success in working out how to use it than I did.

I really miss that phone. Admittedly, I never managed to make a call on it, but that's not the point. It was a crucial weapon in my battle to chat up Harry the Geek. Harry is tall, dark, fiercely intelligent, and smoulderingly georgeous. He is also remarkably bashful in the presence of women. He will speak to us only in the company of some gadget or gizmo that he can hold and fiddle with and generally stay within his comfort zone of the technologically complex. I can hand him a gadget and say something like, "I still can't get it to work as a USB storage device, Harry!" Then I can lose myself in those deep, dark eyes while he talks about technical things I don't understand and don't really care about. Talking about bits and bytes calms and soothes Harry the way a well-made martini relaxes James Bond.

Poor Harry is ill at ease with himself and with other people. He lives in fear that he may be forced to engage in the baffling world of "small talk" and "social intercourse" and all his pychological shortcomings will be put on display. If only he realised, with his looks he doesn't have to say a word. He can just smile and perhaps raise an eyebrow slightly, and any red-blooded woman within smiting distance will fall straight into his arms. Who needs conversation?

Ahem. Well, anyway. As I was saying...

The third reason for my state of disgruntlement is that blooming great bird my son brought back from his latest foray into English History. I don't know what he intends to do with it. I've googled and googled, but I can't even find out how to look after it. Wikipedia was surprisingly reticent on the subject of dodo husbandry. Maybe I shall, in time, write them an article on the subject myself.

My husband, to his credit, took the news that his son had brought a dodo home with very good grace. After initial panic, we decided that the bird (hereafter to be known as Dodgson) should probably be kept warm. Mauritius is warm, isn't it? Geography is not our strong subject. Charlie has constructed a hasty dodo-coop in the workshop, and rigged up a little heater in there to keep Dodgson cozy. We also decided to feed Dodgson fruit, porridge and cornflakes, at least until we could get better advice on diet. Some people keep pigeons, don't they? Dodgson looks rather like a big pigeon. If we could get advice from a pigeon-fancier we could perhaps just multiply up the quantities a bit.

I hope we don't get into trouble with the Council, as we are forbidden to keep chickens in our area. It may be that a dodo would come under the rules for keeping pigeons or even geese. I've asked Charlie to check the Council's rules for poultry-keeping.

I am also worried about giving him exercise without the neighbours finding out. We don't have a very big garden, and a two-foot high bird scratching in our flower beds might attract attention.

The boys bring home a souvenir

Mary Dunwich writes:

I wasn't feeling too well on Saturday. Some bug has been going round the school, and I must have picked it up at the "Parents' Whinge" meeting on Thursday. Honestly, if it weren't for the free tea and slices of Battenberg I wouldn't bother going. I didn't manage to get a word in edgeways. The whinges this term were: homework is hard, P.E. kits get dirty, the teachers are too strict. And this is just from the parents. Heavens knows what the kids find to complain about.

I was tucked up on the sofa with a pot of tea and a plate of buttered malt loaf, when the door opened and a selection of the Younger Generation slouched in. I noticed hazily that they were grubby, and smelled of soot, woodsmoke, tobacco smoke and....my nose signed off before it reported anything that might distress me.

"Mmmmfff!" I mumbled from beneath the duvet.

"Oh, cheers, Mum!" said James and grabbed my plate of malt loaf. "We're starving!"

"Where've you been?" I sat up and tried to focus.

"London," mumbled Stanley through a mouth of cake.

"Again?" I asked, pouring myself another cup of tea.

"Last week we did the Great Fire of 1666," Stanley answered. "Today we wanted to see Guy Fawkes blowing up the Houses of Parliament in 1605."

"But the thing about the Gunpowder Plot," I said, sipping tea and struggling to concentrate, "The important thing is...it failed. The Houses of Parliament didn't blow up, so there was nothing to see. Er...oh. You didn't make the plot succeed, did you? I think you could do some serious damage to history there."

"Oh, no!" said James cheerfully. "That would have been a bit naughty. We would have ended up killing lots of people. And if we changed history then Stanley's Scouts pack might not hold their bonfire and fireworks display this November 5th, which would be a shame. No, we went to warn Guy Fawkes so he would call off the plot and they wouldn't all get tortured and then hanged, drawn and quartered. That was really evil, what King James had done to them."

"Mmm," I responded. I don't hold with meddling with the fabric of recorded history, but you can't deny that my son's heart is in the right place. "So what did you do?"

"We went to London in March 1605," said Stanley, sitting on my duvet and getting some soot onto it. "I've read this cool book about the plot. Guy Fawkes rented a cellar beneath the House of Lords and by March he had hidden thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in it. They wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the Autumn and kill King James, but a member of their gang gave the game away when he warned his brother-in-law to stay away from parliament. We thought it would be easy to find Fawkes in London in the Spring and warn him off."

"But we couldn't get in," continued Jay, who had settled himself on the beanbag. "There were all these guards. We couldn't get anywhere near the Houses of Parliament. We went all round looking for a way in. We looked for ages, until I needed the toilet."

"We told him he could go in the street," chimed in James. "Other people were. There were poos everywhere. But he wouldn't go unless there was a proper toilet. So I thought of going into the nearest pub. Pubs always have toilets. And I thought we might find Guy there, or someone who knew him."

"And they let us in!" said Stanley with astonishment and wonder in his voice. "They let us into a pub, and we're only eleven. People were drinking beer and smoking and everything in there!"

"I don't think there were a lot of laws about taverns in those days," I murmered, trying very hard not to imagine the scene. Of all the places I could wish my boy not to see, a seventeenth-century tavern in London would be fairly high on the list. "What was it like?"

"Dark, smoky, smelly. The toilet was just a bucket in a shed. It didn't flush or anything!" complained Jay. "It was really hard to go."

"He was gone for ages," said Stanley. "While he was gone we got talking with these sailors."

"They were hard to understand," said James. "Funny accents. I think they were Dutch. Albert could understand them a bit. They were really friendly. They shared their dinner with us. Sausages and beer and rum. They let us have a smoke of their pipes too. It wasn't very nice."

"Their breath stank, and their teeth were really horrible, all brown and stumpy," said Stanley. "Maybe it was scurvy. They said they ate ships' biscuits most of the time when they were at sea. They weren't used to eating proper food."

"We gave them a Mars Bar and they got really excited!" said James. "They asked to see all the things we had on us. Luckily Stanley had his rucksack with our provisions in it. We did a trade."

"What did you give them?" I asked with fascination and some concern.

"Golden syrup sandwiches, three bottles of Fruit Shoot, three bananas, a bag of Fangtastics, half a packet of polos, a biro, my best Doctor Who rubber, my sports watch and a mobile phone," answered James promptly. "And the rucksack."

"My Mum's not going to be pleased about that," moaned Stanley. "It's my Scouts one, I need it for our camp-out next month."

"Jay's Mum won't be pleased about the mobile phone," I countered. "You've only just got it back from 1969."

"Oh, that's all right!" said James cheerfully. "It wasn't his mobile phone, it was yours."

"WHAT?" I shrieked.

"You told me to take it," he said innocently. "You told me to get pictures as evidence that we'd really been to the past."

"You have given my mobile phone to a seventeenth-century Dutch sailor," I said as calmly as possible under the provocation. "That's going to give archaeologists nightmares for years. It's not even going to be much use to him. The battery will run down in a couple of days and it will be useless."

"Yeah, he was more excited about the watch," admitted James. "I told him it was waterproof, never needed winding, and was accurate to within about a minute a year. He thought it was great!"

I thought about what I had read about the Dutch exploration of the East in search of spice routes. Anyone with a reliable time-piece would have an absolutely collosal advantage on the sea. They would be able to work out their longitude, and therefore their position, better than any of the explorers of their day. They would be space-time travellers of the seventeenth-century.

"That watch would be worth an absolute fortune in 1605," I mused. "I hope you got something good in exchange?"

"We left it in the kitchen, Mum!" answered James.

The doorbell suddenly started playing "I'm the Laughing Gnome!" and we all jumped.

"Quick Jay, Stanley, James, upstairs for a quick wash and brush-up before Stanley's mum sees you!" I commanded. "I can keep her talking for about five minutes. Come down looking respectable or you'll get grounded again!"

They thumped and crashed their way upstairs, and I opened the door to Lizzie Higgs-Boson. Luckily she was quite happy to grumble about the "Parent's Whinge" meeting, so I didn't have to delay her by forcing her to have some tea and cake while her son and Jay cleaned themselves up. A quarter of an hour later I was free to go into the kitchen, to wash up my tea things. That was when I discovered the grubby, maritime-looking (and smelling) hessian sack on the floor by the dishwasher.

I prodded it cautiously. The sack stirred. Remembering the rat that Stanley had brought back from 1666 I felt suddenly nervous. What living creature would my son and his friends consider to be a fair swap for their sandwiches and some twenty-first century technology?

Rather shakily I untied the top of the sack and opened it up. A beady yellow eye glared at me reproachfully. It was attached to an enormous bird, about the size of Stanley's little brother Ivor. It had pigeony grey feathers, a curved and pointed beak some nine inches long, absurd little stubby wings, short, fat yellow legs and a tuft of big curly feathers for a tail.

"Aargh!" I yelled and jumped smartly backwards, hitting my head on the extractor fan. "Oh my Gods! You're a....!"

"Doo-doo!" said the dodo.

Men in Black

It was nearly tea-time and I was grabbing a quiet few minutes on the computer when the doorbell rang. It played "Tie me kangaroo down" and made me jump.

I went and opened the door. On the doorstep were two sinister-looking men, both tall and dark. They were wearing severely-cut dark suits, white shirts and sunglasses. One of them was inspecting my doorbell as though it had failed to live up to his expectations.

"Can I interest you gentlemen in the message of The Great Cthu'lu?" I asked brightly. (It's always a good idea to get the first word in with these religious types). "I have some leaflets right here!"

"I'm a Jedi Knight myself," said the more hairy man in black. "And my colleague here can always ask the Devil if he has any questions on religion."

"Och, I dinna talk to him, he talks tae me," said the one fiddling with the doorbell. "I dinna encourage him."

"Charlie! Harry! I'm so sorry, I didn't recognise you, you look like respectable people in those suits," I said and stood aside to let my husband and his colleague and fellow badger-champion inside.

Charlie and Harry own a grand total of two suits between them, which they bought at a funeral home's closing-down sale. They wear them for weddings, funerals, visits to the psychiatriast (in Harry's case) and Council planning meetings. They look quite scarily official in them, until you look down and see the Doc Martin boots on Charlie's feet and the lack of socks on Harry's.

"Happy Birthday, Harry!" I said, giving him a big hug. This was rather unkind of me, forcing unexpected physical intimacy with a member of the opposite sex on Harry. He flushed bright fuchsia and shambled off to look at our collection of Monkey DVDs.

"They agreed one badger crossing, but they're still arguing about the placing of the ones by the park," growled the Werewolf, taking his Dalek lunchbox out of his offical council briefcase. "We stressed the importance of the electronic eyes and the badger-tagging. Nobody really seems to care about the rights of badgers in Middlehamptonborough."

"That's terrible, dear," I said mechanically. "Minnie, James come downstairs and wish Harry a Happy Birthday!" There was a sound as though of a group of drunken baboons falling out of a tree, and my children appeared.

"Take Minnie's chainmail off and put some trousers on, James. Minnie, I need you to try the chainmail on for size. Hurry up because it's nearly time for tea," my mouth said while my brain wandered off somewhere else entirely. Men in black...official...scarey...James....Men In Black...tea...aha!

"AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" I yelled. Harry, who isn't good with loud noises, jumped and banged his head on the sideboard.

"Sorry, Harry," I said as he did some calming breathing exercises. "Charlie dear, I need you and Harry to run a quick errand and get Jay's mobile phone. James will take you to where they left it."

I'll say this for my husband, he may look like someone who howls at the full moon, but that hairy head is packed with brains. He had worked it out before James had finished putting his trousers on.

"Come with us, Harry, you'll like this," he said. "We'll have a ride in James' go-cart. James, we need you to drive. You two can sit on my lap if you like."

"Not that we're gay!" said James and Harry in chorus as they went out to the workshop. I smiled at a problem well solved and went out into the kitchen to finish icing Harry's birthday cake.

Baking a cake for Harry The Geek

Mary Dunwich writes:

It is Harry the Geek's twenty-eighth birthday tomorrow and I'm baking him a cake.

I should like it known that it wasn't my idea to call him The Geek. He insists on it. He has considered the range of likely nicknames and decided that The Geek is probably the best he's likely to get. He is proud of being an electronics genius, and rightly so. Harry is tall, dark and Scottish, good-looking in a brooding sort of way, and fiendishly intelligent. He is quietly spoken, well-mannered and very good with children. He's just my type, although I daren't tell him how gorgeous he is because it would only embarrass him. He doesn't have much self-esteem. Ah, if only I were still single. If only I were younger. If only the Devil would stop stealing all his socks. Harry the Geek has schizophrenia.

We met him four years ago now, when we were up at St Isaac's scrumping for apples. He had been an inpatient there for some time, and had just escaped from the ward for a shopping trip. The orderlies searching the grounds for him saw the Werewolf up an apple tree, and were understandably confused. My husband refused to be coaxed down from his tree, and by the time a nurse had fetched a ladder Harry had returned from PC World and was offering to hold it steady for them.

It was the start of a beautiful friendship. We all took to Harry straight away. After all, hearing voices, seeing odd things or having peculiar ideas is hardly unusual in our house. Now that James is channelling the spirit of Albert Einstein, and the Devil now only talks to Harry on Father's Day, it's hard to say which of them is weirder. The medication they put Harry on at Sir Isaac's keeps him pretty stable, and he even managed to finish his master's degree while he was an inpatient there (that must have involved a lot of escaping). Charlie helped Harry to get his first proper job at the Council and they work in the same office planning road crossings for badgers. In return, Harry designed and built our doorbell out of an old Coke can and the insides of some musical greetings cards.

I have invited him round tomorrow for a proper birthday tea, with jelly and a cake and candles and everything. Minnie and James are very excited. So, I think, is Harry. He doesn't have a lot of friends or family (and certainly not family who are friendly) so he spends his birthday alone and gloomy unless forced to have a good time. He can't drink with his medication and anyway isn't a party animal, but he likes Doctor Who and stupid jokes and any toy with a battery in it. I might even ask James to take him for a ride in his space-time travel module. Hey, Harry's schizophrenic, he's not going to tell anyone he's travelled through time, is he? Not without getting his medication reviewed.

Stealing Newton's apples

Mary Dunwich writes:

Sunday was a lovely, warm sunny day for a change, so the Dunwich family went out for the afternoon. We walked down to the psychiatric hospital, the Sir Isaac Newton Hospital for Long-Term Inpatients, known to us locals as Sir Isaac's. It is a lovely old place, with large, rambling grounds with a little orchard and some lovely old woods. The public are allowed in the grounds, and it is a favourite spot for dog-walking, blackberry-picking and frisbee practice.

There is a lovely old orchard, now sadly abandoned. I suppose it was once planted for occupational therapy, but it's been long neglected. The only people who pick the apples now are us locals, who turn up with rucksacks and wheelbarrows and shopping trolleys to take their scrumpings home. I know it's stealing, the apples must belong to the hospital trust or whoever manages hospitals for the NHS these days. But I've never seen anyone official looking out there in a stepladder, and we've never been chased off the premises yet.

I made sure the family were all looking respectable before we set off. The Werewolf was wearing his best jeans and a Glastonbury festival t-shirt ("Glastonbury: not just a load of old cow-pats!"). I wore my new LingQ t-shirt ("You don't have to be mad to learn foreign languages but it helps!"). James had even done his flies up. I didn't want us to get mistaken for in-patients trying to escape again.

It was great fun picking all the apples. Legend has it that some of the trees are grafted from old Isaac's own apple tree (the one that invented gravity) but I wouldn't know which. In any case the Werewolf is only interested in picking the cooking apples for making his chutney and pickle. I like the stripey sweet eating apples so I was busy picking those. Minnie ate six apples and then had a sword-fight with James using sticks.

I managed to get James to elaborate on his time-travelling adventures, while he was hanging upside down, half out of one of Sir Isaac's apple trees. It turns out that Jay has been grounded for leaving his mobile phone at Granny's in 1969. Surely this can't be right?

I walked over to the cooking apple trees to ask the Werewolf while he and Minnie were picking the cooking apples. Did he remember his Mum having a mysterious artifact when he was a little boy? He told me Granny Dunwich's story about the alien visitors and the subsequent visit from the Men In Black. This is all really very strange. While I, like all right-minded people, believe my government is capable of all sorts of dreadful things to cover up The Truth, it seems very odd that they should have got news of the alien visit so soon. Who did Granny tell? Or were the Men In Black who came and took the phone away merely a product of Granny's overheated imagination? But if James is right, the phone was left at her house. Either someone took it away or it must have still been there while the Werewolf was growing up. And he doesn't remember it.

I pondered on this all the way home while Minnie threatened to be sick. Did the British Government get hold of a twenty-first century mobile phone in the late sixties, and what did they do with it? Did Granny look at the pictures on it first? I hope there weren't any pictures of her on it. No-one likes to see pictures of themselves from thirty-nine years in the future.

Unpleasantness in the streets of London

Mary Dunwich writes:

This Saturday I was determined not to be caught unawares by the Time Warp Trio. I sat down after tea and knitted Minnie's chain-mail for the Hedgehogs Rampant (a hoodie knitted in stocking stitch in grey wool on very big needles), while watching the adventures of Merlin on BBC1. I had even managed to record it. So I wasn't caught by surprise when my son and his friends slouched into the room.

"Yes, I recorded Merlin," I said while counting my stiches and hoping I hadn't recorded Timewatch on BBC2 by mistake. Then my brain read the report which my nose had just sent it. "What in the name of Harry Potter?" The three of them smelled of bonfires and cesspits.

I studied the young travellers. They were covered in soot, scorch marks, their hair was plastered to their heads, and they looked like they had been wading through mud. Well, something brown. "You look like chimney sweeps and smell worse than Ivor's nappy bucket. Where have you been? No, don't tell me. Lizzie's coming for Stanley and Jay in ten minutes. You need to run up and have a shower - a SHOWER, James, that's when the water falls on you from above, then find some clean clothes from James' drawers. Leave me your clothes, I'll wash them for you."

"I hate showers," grumbled James. "They ruin my hairstyle!"

"It looks like something's already done that," I countered. "What IS that in your hair?"

"It's Gardy Loo," supplied Jay. "This woman tipped some over us from an upstairs window."

"I think it was a chamber pot," admitted James. "It was full of wee and poo."

I shut my eyes and counted to ten. I got to two before my patience gave out. "UPSTAIRS NOW!" I yelled. They ran, leaving nothing but a few cinders and the rather distressing smell of history behind them.

Not a moment too soon, either. I saw Lizzie striding purposely up our garden path past the set of garden gnomes, which, thanks to my daughter, are now covered with sticking plasters. I opened the door just as Lizzie rang our bell. The doorbell played "Tiptoe through the Tulips" at her which caught us both by surprise. I opened the door.

"Hello, Mary!" she said, recovering her poise. "Are Stanley and Jay ready to go?"

"They're upstairs," I said, evasively. "Come and have a slice of apple pie while you're waiting. It's the most wonderful recipe from Switzerland!"

I herded her, protesting genteely, into the kitchen and forced a piece of Mrs Einstein's apple pie on her. When she politely called it "lovely", I insisted on writing her out the recipe. This killed a good ten minutes. When I judged that her patience was starting to wear thinner than her good manners I called the boys down, hoping they were now presentable. And, miracle of miracles, they were. Stanley was wearing jeans and a cyberman t-shirt, Jay was wearing jogging bottoms and a London Science Museum hoodie. James was in his underpants and socks. Clearly the strain of finding two clean outfits had proved too much for him.

"What are you doing here, Jay?" asked Lizzie in consternation. "I thought you were grounded!"

"Mumble mumble mumble so unfair mumble mumble," replied Jay.

"What have you done, Jay?" I asked with interest. I've never known him get in trouble before. I hope my children weren't involved.

"He lost his mobile," supplied Stanley helpfully. "He left it .....somewhere..... last weekend."

"And why are you wearing those clothes, Stanley?" asked Lizzie.

"We had....a water fight!" said James with a burst of inspiration. We got our clothes all wet."

"I'll wash them and bring them to school on Monday," I put in quickly.

When Lizzie had left with the boys, I looked sternly at my son. "Where did you go this time?" I asked.

"The Great Fire of London," he answered, smugly. "1666. We actually saw it, like, starting, in Pudding Lane."

"You didn't start it?" I asked suspiciously. I've got to stop watching Heroes.

"Of course not!" he replied indignantly. We sat on a bit of fence and ate our sandwiches and watched it. It was cool!" Funny way to describe the most famous fire in British history, but that's eleven-year-old boys for you. "Then we got spotted by a crowd of people. We tried pretending we were French tourists but they just got really angry so we ran away. They thought we'd started the fire or something."

Well, yes, it's always been risky being French in England. We've been at war with France for much of our history.

"Did you bring anything back with you this time?" I asked.

"We took some photos." And he handed me over his (my!) camera.

There were some fuzzy pictures of flames against a night sky which could have been a November 5th bonfire anywhere in the country. There were pictures of the boys, posing with what looked like a....

"Is that a dead cat?" I asked in bewilderment.

"Yeah! Right there in the middle of the street! It looked like it had been there for days!" James replied with relish. Mmm...who says history is dull? I slideshowed through the remaining pictures. There weren't many and they mostly seemed to be pictures of the boys pointing at...

"Poos! Right there in the street! Real people's poos, not just from dogs and cats!" James was almost beside himself with the thrill of discovery.

"Is that all the pictures you took?" I asked in some disbelief.

"Well, the memory was nearly full with the pictures of the Doctor Who exhibition at Earl's Court," said James. "I haven't uploaded them yet. I wasn't going to delete them."

"What about the 2 Gig memory card?" I asked. "Oh, hang on. It's in my mobile. Ah. You'd better take it next time. It's a terrible shame to time travel and not come back with any souvenirs."

"Oh, we did bring some things back," said James cheerfully. He fetched his jeans and rummaged in the pockets. "I got some bits of wood, they are bits of the buildings that burned down. I've got a bit of newspaper, except I dropped it and it's all covered in....er...mud, probably. And I got some maggots off the dead cat."

"Not really convincing," I said while my stomach heaved and my insides tried to become my outsides. "There's nothing special about the burned bits of wood. The newspaper's ruined and unreadable (and smelly, put it in the outside bin please!). And the maggots are just maggots."

James looked disappointed. "Stanley's got a rat," he said.

My imagination crashed at this point.

"Rats are no good," I said firmly. "You need an animal that's changed in 400 years. Changed or become extinct. And get rid of those maggots before I wash those jeans. In the garden, please. If I find them in your sock drawer there will be trouble."

I really must have another attempt at explaining the concept of hygiene to my son. I suppose I should be grateful he wasn't in London the year before. Oh Lordy, the rat! I went upstairs with some trepidation to look in the pockets of Jay and Stanley's jeans. They were all empty. Stanley must have taken the rat home with him. I do hope it wasn't carrying the Bubonic Plague. We haven't been vaccinated against it.

Granny Dunwich spins a yarn

The Werewolf (I prefer "Caveman Charlie" actually) writes:

Hello dear, I just thought I'd stop by and see how your blog is doing. 35 hits already, not bad, eh? Who would have thought so many people wanted to read your diary?

My blog is well over the 2000 mark now, it seems my reminiscences of my days in the music industry are rather popular. That's Going Crazy With Caveman Charlie, at www.cavemancharlie.fruitcake.com, in case any of your readers are interested!

Since your blog consists of bits and bobs of our family life, I thought I'd write an entry for you. This is a Granny Dunwich story.

I went round to my parents' on Sunday, to help Dad spray DDT on next door's Leylandii hedge. Mum hadn't done her usual baking session on Saturday. The turf war between the Women's Institute and the Cross-stitch Circle has been hotting up and she spent most of Saturday out delivering threatening letters. So instead of the usual pile of buns she offered me a cheese and Branston pickle sandwich.

"I've always hated Branston pickle," I grumbled. "Have you eaten all that apple and rhubarb chutney I gave you?"

"The men from Alpha Centauri said it was great!" she retorted. This sounded like the start of one of my Mum's tall stories, so I settled back in her Parker Knoll chair and put my disbelief on hold.

"It was back in the summer of 1969, I remember it because your Dad had got you out of bed in the middle of the night to watch the first moon landing live on the telly," she said, smiling at the memory. "The next day you were so tired and grumpy, I was quite cross about it. Your Dad had you out in the workshop making a model. I was making some fairy cakes when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to these three funny-looking creatures. They said they were Jehovah's Witnesses from Alpha Centauri, but they didn't fool me. They were all under five feet tall, and dressed in strange grey material from head to toe, they even had hoods made from it. And they had the strangest shoes, with such thick, soft soles that you couldn't hear them when they walked. When they lowered their hoods I could see that they had short hair that stuck up at the oddest angles. Jehovah's Witnesses never look like that. Obviously they were Short Ugly Greys.

"Well, I was bored so I played along. I invited them in and made them a pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches while they watched the Clangers. They got very excited about the Branston pickle (one said it was "better than the Werewolf's!") and when Trumpton came on the telly, they went wild. I suppose they can't receive it on Alpha Centauri.

"I went out to put the fairy cakes in the oven. When I came back one of the little grey people was holding up a small, matt-black device, like something out of Start Trek. He said it was a Mobile. He kept pointing it all round the room and pressing funny little buttons, while making sounds like "Cool!" "Phat!" and "L.O.L.!"

I watched him until the kitchen timer beeped and I went back out to to sort out the cakes. When I came back the sitting room to find the little people watching footage of the moon landing the night before. The one with the Mobile was pointing it at the telly and shouting "Oh wow! This is sick!" I suppose they weren't too happy about our first steps into space. Then another of them said that if they didn't run for it they'd "miss the end of Merlin" (whatever that meant) and they left in a hurry."

"Well, Mum, that's an interesting story," I said as calmly as I could. It doesn't do to get her over-excited. "Quite strange, don't you think?"

"Oh, you haven't heard the weird bit yet," she answered brightly. (Really? I unplugged my disbelief at the mains and waited.) "They left their Mobile behind when they ran out. I thought they might come back for it, so I put it in the china cabinet next to my Edward the Eighth coronation mug. The next day I had a visit from two strange Men In Black wearing serious suits and dark glasses. They warned me not to tell anyone what had happened and they took the Mobile away with them."

Mum finished her cup of tea, stood up and started to load the cups, saucers and plates back onto the tea tray. "No," she said reflectively, "the really weird part was this: one of the little people from Alpha Centauri looked an awful lot like your Dad when he was a boy."