Southend U3A

Writing for Fun

June 2018

An Inspiration - Jeff Kebbell

I am Professor Joseph Livings and studied at Aberdeen and Newcastle Universities before doing post doctorate work at Oxford where I now lecture in palaeontology specialising in the reptile age and specifically the Therapods.

Today I am meeting a new bunch of students in my study. I am not greatly enamoured of my students, who with good memories and little interest in my subject get themselves a good degree from Oxford and a well-paid career at the end.

I have research to follow up with a very lucrative job at the end for which I will have worked hard. Meanwhile, I have to teach these disinterested public school snowflakes some of my hard earned knowledge. However, I have my ways.

I produce the book I have written on palaeontology and tell them that the exams will be based on this and for forty pounds each they can own the book giving them a choice of success or disaster. They have heard of my way and quickly produce the money as the books that cost me five pounds to print are dished out. But wait, one student explains that he cannot afford the book and will attend the library. He is a grammar school boy as I was many years ago and equally poor by the sound of it.

‘The exams are based on my book and the library does not have a copy’ I explain to the chortles of the rich kids. ‘See me after’.

When the others have left, the grammar school boy stands there slightly red faced and fists clenched at his side. What do you intend to do after your degree?’ I say. ‘I want to study the Therapods as you have done, Professor, and try for a doctorate’.

I reach for a copy of my book which was on the table. ‘Here is a copy of the book with my notes in it for preparing for a degree. Take it and do not let the other students see it at any time and when you get your doctorate see me, as I am looking for an assistant for my next project. Don't let me down.’

The grammar school boy's face broke into a smile. ‘Thank you Sir, I won't let you down.’

The term proceeded as it usually did and I had the students excavate the footsteps under the local turf of a diplodocus that had passed that way when it was marsh. They made casts of the footprints and wrote pages and pages of rubbish about them in their project books.

One day, great excitement, as they burst into my study when I was enjoying a well-earned nap after doing nothing that morning. ‘Calm down, calm down,’ I expostulated.

‘Professor, under one of the footprints was the remains of a human skeleton,’ one gasped out.

‘Rubbish,’ I said, ‘homo sapien was not around for several million years after the diplodocus had gone.’

‘I swear to you it's true and it looks like it's a modern skeleton too’. I paused suddenly. An Inspiration! ‘Was it wearing glasses?’ I said.

At dinner that evening Dr Truesmith of the English Department who has the study next me mine commented on the laughter issuing from my study that afternoon.

‘Livings, old chap, you have the quietest most frightened students in the College. I cannot believe the racket coming from your study this afternoon. Don't tell me you told a joke?’

I stared him down and said, ‘It was probably the hysteria,’ and carried on eating.

When the laughter died down with my fixed stare at the students that morning a silence fell.

‘Yes, he was wearing glasses,’ said the grammar school boy and produced a lump of rock from his bag with a small plate of quartz sticking out the side.

‘Well done,’ I said and managed to crack a smile at the gaping mouths. ‘You have solved a twenty six million year old murder mystery.’ I went to a cupboard and produced a plaque which had the legend: TEMPORKINETIC POTENTIAL DEMOLECULARISATION DEPT.

‘Professor Baldock was the cleverest man I ever met. He was head of the Physics department and in his spare moments studied time and its displacement,’ I continued, ‘You see light is made up of particles, photons, which travel at the speed of light. To go faster you must employ tachyons which are faster but so far had not been discovered or made. If we can change atoms into tachyons you have the makings of a time machine. Well Baldock confided in me that he had achieved this. He started importing mice into his laboratory and began to send them back in time. Forward in time was impossible he said. With time on my hands, I let him take me into his personal laboratory and explain the workings of his machine. Except for the workings, the machine was basically a cabinet with a unit fitted to the side. He showed me a mouse with great pride that he had sent back in time and brought him back.

When he finally started to go back in time himself, he offered to go back to the period I specialised in and get some samples of the smaller specimens there. I was not keen, seeing danger, but his excitement was contagious and one afternoon he went back to my period of study and did not return.

That was as far as I took it with my students. What I told no-one was that I took his notes and his time machine back to my house and contacted certain departments in the government. A billion pounds is not to be sneezed at!