Alvin J. Crow intro

An outing to the museum, for which a sense of the macabre and a certain voyeurism is appropriate, is to take place. Outing is to take place in the evening. We want to cover all the bases.
A kind of a school outing or of an archaeological society. Or of the standard bored and semi-interested students. No permission slips required from parents. The kids in the current group are all over eighteen, some are as old as thirty. Among the group is a dark and sombre boy called Alvin, tendency to brood alone, sits by himself on the minibus.
The members of this group have known each other since infant school, they know one another's foibles and peculiarities intimately, they have shared old jokes and enmities long since. Now they have settled down to their mild and cynical twenties, curious, facetious, worldly-wise, thinking the whole idea of a trip to the museum a veritable jest.
Now here they are in the museum, a large chunk of Victorian neo-classicism set in the middle of a long seedy street in the middle of the city. In they trip, and commence to traipse slouchingly around the outer perimeter of exhibition rooms, some wandering loosely off on their own, others chewing gum, arms folded, staring haggard at totem poles and stuffed animals. The whale skeleton is pretty cool, and that triceratops skull and check out the kodiak bear. Fossils are pretty dull, but how about that copy of the Delphi charioteer? Upstairs they have the caveman exhibit, floor of a neanderthal's lair, plus a fish skeleton fossilised and hung up. The whole place is a tribute to the noble science of taxidermy.
History section is not bad... some arrowheads, a flintlock or two, some Pictish rune-stones... a sabre from the Civil War... don't bother with the engineering section unless you want to look at 1902 motor cars and James Watt's fuckin turbine steam engine...
The charitable foundations that fund these places sure do a good job. Either that or private enterprise, whatever. The noble museum with the stars and stripes flying outside it. Look at these magnificent collections of ethnology and renaissance art.