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.