Tangled Tales – Serial Week/Carroll – Daniel 60

 

[For a quick guide go here: Quick guide.]

[Old back story is here: Story so far at 30 Nov 2020 and read more recent Daniel episodes especially this one.]

[Other back story through in-links. Plundered source material.]

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Daniel looked at his wrist watch. He was on time, he was definitely on time. Well, OK, so time seemed to have moved a little faster than he was expecting, but nevertheless he remained hopeful that he would make it to the museum on time.

He bleeped the QR code as required and scurried into the building behind a family which included a girl wearing white bunny ears on her head.

The museum was meant to be an easy place for them to meet up. But then they had different entry times to bleep in with and given that Daisy was erratic in what she wanted to do, look at and think about at the best of times, Daniel realised they should have been more specific.

The other unforeseen – but he should have seen it coming – issue was that the museum had introduced a strict one way traffic-flow for visitors. No longer was it possible to just saunter around in whatever direction you wished, you now had to follow a definite pathway, although you could duck out of the Egyptian Mummies exhibition and some of the taxidermy if you thought it would freak you out too much.

Daniel tried to get through the rooms as quickly as he could to find the one his ex-wife and daughter were in. This was hindered of course, by the need to keep distance between himself and the other visitors. But he got through the sea life room - complete with plastic turtle display - remarkably quickly and found himself in the room of more local, up to date natural history.

In one case there was a dormouse, looking lively but stuffed, perhaps hoping to eat a lump of cheese positioned tantalisingly in front of him. “Bad luck,” thought Daniel of the rigid animal. And then he noticed there were actually several stuffed dormice in the case, all with noses to the air, hopeful, but of course, dead.

It was then Daniel realised that of course they would be waiting for him at the cafe. There was nothing Chrissy liked more than a good cup of tea, and nothing Daisy liked more than ransacking the contents of the cafe counter to find that elusive jam tart she could snack on. And then she’d need another jam tart after that “just to keep me going”.

The cafe was using an admission system based on numbered cards. So Daniel had to take one and wait for his number to be called before going into the smaller service area. Unfortunately he heard no numbers called for a full five minutes and then heard the number seven. He held number five.

Having explained the situation to a waitress who did not apparently understand the system he got into the cafe to find it empty. He turned to the server. “Have you seen a mother and her little girl?” He asked.

“Oh yeah,” said the waitress, “Loads of them. Which ones were you after?”

Daniel realised he didn’t know what they were wearing.

“Oh,” said the waitress, disinterestedly, “never mind. Would you like some tea, otherwise you need to move on a space.”

Daniel continued to be moved on through various spaces and before too long he found himself forced through the exit and back outside the museum again, still clutching his QR code and still with no idea as to where Chrissy and Daisy were.

He talked his way back into the building, rescanning as he went, and this time phoned Chrissy.

“She’s wearing her favourite hat,” said Chrissy.

“Which of her favourite hats is that?” asked Daniel, feeling none the wiser and not terribly happy that Chrissy has deemed an item of clothing as having special significance. Super special significance.

“It’s got a big smiling cat on it.”

Daniel turned round and at last saw them. “Got you!” He said into his phone and clicked it off. Except that he’d actually seen the back of Daisy’s head in a large mirror suspended from the ceiling at an obtuse angle to enable the people below the first world war spitfire to be able to see and interesting aspect of the plane. While heading in what he thought was the right direction, Daniel was still trying to unscramble the sight lines in his head in order to work out exactly where the duo were in relation to him and, well, everything else.

Still unable to find the other two, Daniel reluctantly phoned Chrissy again. 

“Look, I’ve been all over the Central Museum. Twice. I can’t find you anywhere?”

“Central?” said Chrissy. “What are you doing there? We’re at the Science and Industry Museum.”

Daniel switch off his phone and wished the ground would open up and take him in.