Because some people asked for a sequel to my story "Boosh Baby!", this is a story (I suppose you'd call it AU), set in the future, featuring Howard's daughter Daisy. I know it's not quite what was asked for, but this is what came to me.
I Am Daisy Moon
Chapter 1:
The first thing you should know about me is this: my life is not normal.
But that's okay, because I love my life, and I wouldn't change a single thing about it.
Not the fact that my Dad, Howard, is away a lot, working as a freelance time-travelling scientist. Not that my Nana has a habit of showing up at random times and places and embarrassing me in front of my friends – literally, she materialises in the middle of everything and starts, well, being an embarrassing Nana.
Not that my uncle Vince consistently steals my hair products every single time he comes over and often forgets to return them. Not even that some of the kids in my class think I'm a weirdo because my Uncle Bollo used to come and pick me up from school. Honestly, you'd think some people had never seen a gorilla driving a Smart car before.
So, me. My name is Daisy Kamaria Moon, to give you my full name. I'm fifteen and I live in a flat in North London with my mum, Miranda, who's a dance teacher, and sometimes with my Dad as well; when he comes home from saving the Universe, that is. My Nana, Ida Moon, comes to stay a lot too, but it's hard to know when she's coming from when she pops by – it could be from before I was born, or it could be next Wednesday because she wants to stop herself from leaving her umbrella behind.
I have blue eyes, like Mum, and this sort of brownish hair which I keep short because it refuses to be either straight or curly without help – most of which I get from my dad's best mate, my 'Uncle' Vince, whether I want his help or not. I think he's a bit disappointed that I don't really care as much about hair and clothes as he does - he's the only guy I know who wears more eyeliner than any of my friends, but he's pretty cool. He runs the Velvet Onion club, and he lets me in for free if there are any bands playing there I want to see. He also looks exactly the same as he did before I was born because he has a secret stash of water from the Fountain of Youth that he stole from my Uncle Naboo. Naboo's pretty cool too, being a shaman and all. I had some really good holidays on his home planet Xooberon when I was a kid.
Beats Disneyland, hands down. I learnt some amazing tricks from those holidays too; this shaman called Kirk used to teach me spells and stuff, until Dad put a stop to it. He never liked me hanging around with Kirk, not just because he's like, 12 years older than me or something (I never figured out how shaman age, there's something weird about it), but because Kirk used to have all these problems with drugs and stuff and Dad thinks he'll be a bad influence on me. I keep telling him, there are people at school much worse than Kirk, but he doesn't listen. I guess that's Dads for you.
So, I have a weird life, but I still go to school and that; I want to go to art school when I finish my GCSEs, maybe be a designer or something. The weirdest thing, I suppose, is the whole time-travel shebang. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in my life that I didn't realise was weird for years, but this I always knew wasn't what most people do.
It's a family thing; my Nana and my Dad can both do it, and I sort of can too, although my Mum doesn't like me trying. She thinks it'll get me into trouble, and I suppose she has a point, especially after Dad lost an eye on one of his 'saving-the-universe' trips and won't tell me how it happened.
All I know is that there's this guy Dad's come up against a few times, who might be an alien but is also a cockney, and he's a mint-obsessed nutjob and the reason why Dad had a chronic phobia of eels. I think of him as the Joker to Dad's Batman, and even though no-one'll tell me anything more about him, I've had nightmares about this scary green guy with one giant white eye.
But Nana's taken me on a few jaunts; time-travelling, that is. She taught me how to see within the space-time continuum when I was really little, so the right part of my brain woke up as I got older, which is supposed to make it easier. Dad didn't want to learn when he was little, according to Nana – that's why he moved away from Leeds and came down to London when he was younger - and didn't start time travelling until after I was born. I really want to learn to do more, but Mum won't let me yet, not 'til I'm older.
And so now, I'm in the middle of the toughest challenge I've ever faced.
Work Experience.
I'm sitting in the office of our old bat of a careers advisor (not a real bat, unfortunately, I'd probably like her a lot more if she was), trying to get her to let me work in the Zooniverse or Nabootique, or even the Velvet Onion (although I'm not holding out much hope for that one; no school's going to let a fifteen year old work in a nightclub, even during the day) because to be honest, they'd be a whole lot more fun than any of the other options she's suggested. And even if they're not, I'd get to hang out with my 'Uncles' and that's always good for a laugh.
"These are rather… odd places you want to work, dear," is her response to my choices, giving me the sort of look I always get whenever I talk about my home life, or my Dad and his friends.
"Not really," I reply, thinking about some of the other places I've been too that make Uncle Naboo's second hand shop look like the epitome of normality. For example, if this woman were ever to see Xooberon, she'd probably go stark staring mad.
"I worked in the Zooniverse a bit last summer. My Uncle Bollo runs it."
"Ah yes, I've heard about him. He dresses up as a monkey or something, doesn't he?"
"No. He's a gorilla."
"I beg your pardon?"
The careers advisor stares at me over the top of her glasses.
"I've never figured out how a gorilla came to be in charge of a zoo" I continue cheerfully. "Nobody'll tell me. All I know is that he took it over about five years ago. I think there was some kind of scandal around the guy who used to run it, like with the Velvet Onion."
The woman is now staring at me as if I'm going to sprout wings or something, but I'm enjoying myself far too much to stop now.
"I sort of remember the guy who owned the club before Uncle Vince took over – this shouty, incoherent man I used to call Uncle Bobby before he ran off with Uncle Bollo's fiancée and nobody talks about him anymore."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
I sigh.
"Nothing. It doesn't matter."
"Anyway, we don't allow students to work in places run by their family anymore. We think it best to offer you the chance to experience something that they wouldn't otherwise get."
I smile.
"My family's not like other peoples. I've learnt more travelling with my Dad and my Nana than I ever have in school."
"Oh yes? And what do they do? Bus conductors?"
'What would you know, you patronising cow?' I think. 'I've been to other planets and I've travelled back in time.'
But I don't say that out loud and instead I say:
"They're both time-travelling freelance scientists. And I'll probably be one too, when I grow up. Or an artist of some kind. I haven't decided yet."
The careers advisor gives me a hard stare.
"I don't have time to listen to nonsense, dear"
I'm not surprised. A lot of teachers say things like that to me whenever I give them honest answers about my life.
"This should suit you fine," she says, pushing a sheaf of printouts into my hand and shoving me out the door.
And so, instead of drinking tea with Uncle Naboo and his assistants, Pete and Leroy, or playing with animals in the zoo, or watching bands with Uncle Vince, I'm here filing and making tea as an office junior-type-thing for a company that ships paper clips around the world.
Now, I'm not knocking paper clips, or normal jobs, but what exactly am I supposed to learn here that I couldn't by apprenticing shamen or visiting eighteenth century France? I mean, I already know how to make tea and alphabetise things – Dad made sure I had that skill down at a very young age, so I didn't go around messing up his jazz. Even mucking out at the Zooniverse is more exciting than this; once you've had to round up the dozen or so overexcited sugar gliders you've accidentally released into the canteen on National 'Dress-Like-A-Tree Day', you can handle most things.
By Wednesday morning I'm so bored I could scream. The people here are okay, but all I seem to do is make umpteen cups of tea and coffee for the other staff, move pieces of furniture around and answer the phone – generally wrong numbers or customers changing their orders concerning the exact type of paperclips needed. Thrilling.
So I'm almost pleased when Nana turns up.
Admittedly, she could have been a little less obvious in her materialisation and she could have at least tried to dress vaguely normally, but this is my Nana, I should be used to it by now. I blame Uncle Vince for her fashion sense; he's a bad influence on her.
So I'm stood by the photocopier, fashioning makeshift jewellery from paperclips as I wait for some tediously boring document to be done, when there's a brilliant flash of colour and all of a sudden Nana's there in the middle of the room, causing at least three paperclip merchants to choke on their tea.
"Hi Nana."
"Hello Daisy, dear. You're a difficult girl to find."
"What's up?"
"I need your help with something. Are you busy?"
I shrug.
"Work Experience. Nothing I can't miss, but I should stay here all week, you know, for school and that."
"Oh no, this is far more important. Though I did wonder why you were in a paperclip merchants. Is this what you want to do when you finish school?"
"Um, no. This is what the careers advisor arranged for me."
Nana glances around the room; it's your standard office, with cheap furniture, poor lighting and people in badly-fitting suits in shades of grey. She herself is wearing a jumpsuit in a bright swirly pattern, with a matching cape and has her glasses on a neon string around her neck, like a new-rave librarian.
"Hello there," she shouts out to the shell-shocked staff. "I'm Daisy's grandmother. I'm afraid there's a family emergency, so she won't be able to stay for the rest of today. Do you need me to write a note?"
"Why are you shouting?" I whisper in her ear.
"Am I? Sorry, force of habit."
The manager comes over, frowning.
"Is there a problem here?"
I glance at Nana.
"Yeah, sorry. Family emergency, I have to go. Is that okay?"
The frown deepens. He's not a bad sort, this guy, but he isn't half dull. On my first day, he told me off for wearing bright pink hairclips and glitter on my face – not appropriate for the office, apparently – then again for using paper with little cartoon penguins on it when writing memos, and told me yesterday that I'm too cheerful and smile too much. How can anyone be too cheerful? I dread to think what would happen if he met my Uncle Vince; this guy would probably explode.
"Well," the manager hesitates. "If it's an emergency. But I will have to inform the school."
"No problem," Nana breezes. "I've already been there. Here's my number if you need to contact us."
She hands him a card, grabs my arm and we both vanish, re-materialising back at home in the flat.
