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.