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.
Tuesday 23 December 2008
Tuesday 16 December 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday 9 December 2008
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".
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".
Monday 8 December 2008
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.
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 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."
Friday 5 December 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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