DINOSAURS :D

It's only been two of the planned six months, but I'm moving back home the day after tomorrow. Since time is crashing hurriedly down on everyone and that 10am flight on Sunday is rearing its ugly head, my sister and her partner took me to the National Dinosaur Museum - knowing perhaps better than anyone how much of a little kid I still am at heart; and of course, that dinosaurs are particularly dear to all children.

The sky was overcast - one of those days where the rain can't make up its mind and so it pitters and patters here and there, not staying for long but promising to be back soon. Despite the cold it brough with it, there was a beautiful, quiet feeling in the air; as if the afternoon was slumbering peacefully and you were walking softly over its dreams.

After nearly taking the wrong turn (still learning to drive) we got out of the car and approached the entrance, watched on either side by giant dinosaur figres. Like Grand Sentinels they guarded the entrance, poking out of bushes and stepping out of garden beds (Remember the sphinx in the Never Ending Story? I didn't have to answer any riddles but that's how it felt). We passed their quiet gazes - doing our best not to make any loud noises or sudden movements - and walked into the Dinosaur Museum through a large set of teeth.

A friend near the entrance. *Also doubles as a chair

Once inside we were greeted by a quietly enthusiastic young man in a blue shirt. He struck me as a college student - I liked to think he was a dinosaur enthusiast and this was his weekend job. I decided that he must be studying geology and paleontology - or something similiar - and his dorm-room was necessarily a crowded treasure-trove of collected items: driftwood, fossils, rare gemstones, and shark teeth... Naturally.

'...Ima leave the forest to eat the people in the cities...'

He stamped all of our hands with a little blue dinosaur stamp, even though there were no other people in the museum at this point. (This impressed me - it's good to see people enjoying their jobs)

...This one was friendly, I patted him on the nose...

As we walked up the stairs to the upper levels a robotic pterodactyl greeted us with a roar above our heads. It seemed a perfect introduction to the exhibits and I walked on, eager to see the rest of the museum.

When we reached the top my heart sank for a moment: The first case was under construction, the pieces scattered haphazardly out of order on the bottom of the cabinet. I tried vainly to match the descriptions of cavemen still hanging on the wall with the collection of skulls lying in a confused pile at the bottom of the cabinet. Hoping that there was more instore, I walked on...

...Oh! For a dinosaur like this: He would make an excellent hat-stand!

I had only to make it to the next cabinet and the transformation was complete: I was once again a little kid in a world far too large for me. Fossilised bones almost half my size with a sign inviting the daring to test their strength and pick them up, cabinets full of skulls and strange flying creatures - their bones frail and thin, frozen in time with their wings half extended. Shark teeth in rows from smallest to largest...And in the middle of the room? More robotic dinosaurs :) I walked on through the plastic forest.

...Where are you going Little Bird?

S & B meandered a few cabinets ahead of me, everyone moving at their own pace through this enchanting new world; a treasure trove of oddities and imagination. The hallways were quiet except for a spontaneous growl here and there as someone walked past a motion sensor disguised amongst the plastic foliage (when I say disguised, I mean snuggling up to a plastic rock, trying to look like a distant relation. The white contraptions were not hiding well amongst the ferns. But even this couldn’t spoil the effect, for in these places it’s best to do what a child would do: imagine the modern contraptions to be probes of some kind – sent back to the Dinosaur Age by a fancy gentleman with a Time-Machine)

By the time we left (our dog had jumped the fence and we had to rescue the neighbours) I still hadn’t seen enough. If anything, the dinosaurs reminded me of how much is out there, of how different life is when you look at it from another perspective. I hope that when I get back home I will remember this…Maybe it will get me back here one day.