Laurie Taylor

" Burgeoning student numbers are putting pressure on time-tables and forcing universities to extend their teaching hours " - THES May 18.

FROM: The departmental secretary (Maureen)

TO: All full-time and part-time tutors in the department

SUBJECT: Next term's timetable

You will be pleased to hear that in the many acres of free time that have become available to me between classifying, coordinating, dispatching, collating and processing more than 4,500 separate examination scripts, I have been able to take a languid look at the logistics of next year's timetable.

The normal difficulties of compiling this timetable have been exacerbated this year by the following structural constraints:

a. Permanent absence of a roof in lecture room WX01

b. The conversion of lecture room GD07 into a corporate management sauna facility

c. The confirmation of "sick building syndrome" in lecture room LR002

d. The recurrence of Dr Quintock's "gypy" knee and his resultant inability to climb the stairs leading to lecture room PX137.

These structural impediments mean that next term's timetable can only be accommodated by means of the following temporary adjustments:

a. Professor Lapping's traditional 9.15am first-year "Introduction to Media Studies" lecture in lecture hall WX01 will take place at 6.30am in the new science park marquee (entrance by side flap on the right)

b. Mr Odger's option on "Walter Benjamin and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" will be held in the Xerox room at 8.30pm

c. All first, second and third-year tutorials by the following graduate and short-term contract staff - Ashby, Collins, Knowles, Diplock, Mannering, Punt, Sowerby and Unsworth - will be held in the inquiries office. (As a result, all of next term's inquiries will be cancelled).

Best wishes, Maureen (55 hours-a-week and counting).