I was exhausted, the past couple of days had extracted all my emotional energy and all I wanted to do was sleep. Once the crisis was over, Tom looked very drawn and tired as well. I keep forgetting that he’s an old man closer to seventy than sixty. He does remarkably well, and I grow ever fond of him as a father figure. Sometimes I wish I had a mother one as well, I do miss my mother, even if she didn’t understand me. I like to think that in time, she would have done, but it may be a delusion. The dreams or visions I’ve had have been very mixed, although most recently, they seemed to indicate she’d come to terms with me, which can’t be bad for a deceased individual. I shook my head, perhaps I was more tired than I thought.

“Would you care for a celebratory drink?” asked Tom. He was holding a bottle of whisky, probably a single malt, possibly one of the case I bought him for Christmas.

“Not that stuff, thank you. I don’t like the smell let alone the taste.” I screwed up my face.

“I wisna goin’ to gi’ yer any o’this, it’s far t’ guid for Sassenachs.”

“Not too good for Sassenachs to buy for you, I trust.”

“Ach weel, that’s different, mebbe.” His face broke into a grin nearly as broad as his accent, which got worse the more he had to drink. Think posh Billy Connolly–without the profanities, who said it was going to be easy–and you get the idea.

In the end, I settled for a glass of red wine, which became two and when I eventually got to bed, I completely zonked. I didn’t even wake to go for a wee until about eight the next morning.

It was Monday, and I showered and dressed as quickly as my tiredness would allow, grabbed a piece of toast and a banana and shot off to the university. Somehow, Tom had got there half an hour or more before me.

“Hello, stranger–I take it you didn’t go for a bike ride yesterday then?”

“Oh hell, I’m sorry Pippa, we were besieged by tabloid journalists, did Tom not say anything?”

“No, he’s been meeting with the Dean for the last hour, well forty minutes. I did hear there was a bit of uproar about the new guy, and Tom told me to cancel his classes.”

“Have you?”

“Only the first one, why?”

“Where’s his schedule?”

“Why?”

“Look here, you pen-pusher, I’m academic staff, I can pull rank on you.”

“Pen-pusher? You jumped up dormouse wrestler, you can make your own tea next time.”

“I did last time.”

“Did you, oh, sorry about that, memsahib.”

“I’ll forgive you this once.”

At this, Pippa, sneered and gave me ‘the finger’. I was suitably horrified by her vulgarity–once I stopped laughing. “You’re on secondment anyway, so bugger off.”

“Charming, here I am trying to rescue a sinking ship and all I get are insults from one of the rats–and not one of those refained lab variety either.”

“So how do you propose to save us from the perils of the deep?”

“Did someone wrap your sandwiches in poetry or something?”

“No, but there was a rime on the grass this morning.” This was obviously poetic licence as it wasn’t cold enough for frost.

“I can’t cope with this new depth of shallowness.” At this she chased me around her office with a paper knife, before we both fell down giggling. Finally, after carefully dabbing my supposedly waterproof mascara, I rose and picked up Montgomery’s schedule. “I can do most of this.” Two lectures on meiosis and one on the classification systems of plants and animals. They should have done it at A-level before they got to us, but we do occasionally get maths students who decide they no longer wish to be computers, so go for a more human oriented study–well, as human as rats and dormice ever get.

“I’ll do these for you,” I said and walked off before she could say anything to stop me. They’d had to revamp schedules after I was seconded anyway, so this would have been different to mine. I’ll have to be careful not to get too good at them, or they’ll add them to my list of subjects. These were first years anyway, so they’d have plenty to time to work out that I was winging it and correct their deficiencies and my inadequacies.

I wandered off as fast as my heels would allow me, they were too high really for standing about all day. So, my lectures will become workshops, I’ll set them off and sit down while they teach themselves. I was feeling better already. I had half an hour before I dealt with haploid cell division, something I don’t do any more, since my gonads had gone, so I went up to my office and down loaded a pile of illustrations from the net, swizzed them around in Powerpoint and went off to the lecture room.

An hour later, I wandered back to my office feeling quite energised. I’d actually remembered more than I thought about cell division, mitochondria and the like, and had kept them fairly well amused–as far as I know, no one fell asleep. I involved them, so the vocal ones got to entertain the more passive variety.

We’d even had a good laugh at my expense. It was my own fault, I asked, what’s the difference between meiosis and mitosis? The answer I got back from one of the boys, was–‘eunuchs can only do one of them’, ‘and transsexuals’ added another student. ‘Is that true, Ms Watts?’ asked another.

I paused before I answered, because there was a danger of losing the initiative to the mob, which would be a problem in future. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

“You’re the expert,” came back the reply, “On both counts,” added someone I didn’t see.

“Okay, thanks for that. Shall we say you have missed a rather important point. I am still capable of one form of meiosis–it’s on the marks I give for the essay you will all write. I’m sure you all understand that implication, in which case this has been a success, you now recognise the difference between haploid and diploid.” There were groans and protests, which I ignored.

The next two lectures were on the taxonomy of living organisms, a bit easier on the brain cells and apart from one wag asking, ‘Did someone who’d had a sex change move from one group to another?’

“Group maybe, if we accord them the status of their new gender, however, they remain the same species. Remember there are several vertebrates who change sex spontaneously in response to population needs. They remain the same species.”

“Is that what happened to you, Miss?”

“Yes, I remained the same species as before, would you care to come down and we could do a demonstration on you? I’ve got some scissors here somewhere…”

“Nah, he’d still be a slime fungus,” called another voice in amongst the uproar. Thankfully, after that, I regained full control and we actually had a good time going through the needs and means of classifying animals and plants. As it went on for two hours, it was just as well.

I gave them a short break of fifteen minutes in the middle, I needed to go for a pee and I was sure some of them did, the amount of bottled water they were drinking. Just as I got back from the loo, one of the girls came up to me with a friend. “Can we ask you a question, Miss Watts?”

“Sure, I don’t promise to be able to answer it, though?”

“It’s personal, I’m afraid.”

“In which case, I might not, but you’ve got this far, so you’d better ask it?”

“Were, um…were you really a boy, before, like…um?”

“Why do you ask?” When in doubt answer with a question.

“Well, you’re very pretty, like, and you don’t have, like, big hands and feet.”

“So what do you think, then?” I asked the blushing teenager.

“I don’t know, I don’t think you were…but the rumours…they say the place was full of reporters asking awkward questions and that bald headed bloke was saying nasty things about you an….”

“I think you’re very pretty and very brave,” said her friend.

“Okay, back to your seats then. Right, who can tell me the difference between a plant and an animal? Keep it clean and scientific..”

I was exhausted after the marathon session. Unless you’re a taxonomist, it’s as dry as dust. I hoped they didn’t think so. Just as we finished, one of them asked about the Youtube clip. That bloody film is going to follow me to the grave, I’m sure of it.

As I walked past Tom’s office, doing my world famous zombie impersonation, he stepped out and invited me in. “What are you doing here?”

“Teaching my classes, why?”

“You’ve been seconded, you are not officially here, and after the weekend, weren’t you in danger of being humiliated by your students?”

“That could happen at anytime.”

“They’re more likely to forget weeks or months later.”

“Not if it gets stirred up when the film is shown.”

“Maybe it won’t,” Tom shrugged.

“And maybe the moon is made of green cheese.”

“So why are you here?”

“To help you out, befuddle growing minds, get humiliated by my students–take your pick, but no more than two choices.”

“We’d have coped.”

“No you wouldn’t, I happen to know you have two staff off with flu and Mr Creepy has been suspended if not sacked. I was free, so I thought I’d amuse myself corrupting young minds.”

“They asked you awkward questions, didn’t they?”

“You know they did, apart from two mature students, they are all the victims of their hormones. I’m a curiosity, which hopefully, they’ll now know not to try and take the rise out of.”

“So they did?”

“Of course they did, and I answered back. It’s showbiz with subliminal learning.”

“Want some lunch?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

“Thank you, Cathy, I do appreciate it.”

“I owed you one for yesterday.”

“That was me being protective of my daughter.”

“This was me being caring for my father,” I replied and he pecked me on the cheek.

“Come, daughter, let’s eat drink and be merry.” I followed him out even though sleeping was at the top of my list.