Not often I find myself at the top of the New Building. It’s all fancy, glass-walled meeting rooms overlooking the city roofscape. Since it's quiet up here this morning, I step outside, just for a moment, to admire the panorama from the balcony encircling the whole floor. A damp, but clearish day with wide views (and long drops - ouch, look out, not down!). After the briefest of strolls around I try the nearest door and find it locked. The next door and the next also resist my hand. The door I came out through is the only one left unlocked, then, in Winter - either that or… oh no, they’re all fixed to open from the inside only! On the long walk, heart in mouth, around the building back to where I started from, I’m oblivious to the 360-degree vistas, absorbed now by mental visions of miming my embarrassing plight through the glass wall to one VIP group or the other: locked out! let me in! The door I came out of opens, of course. How quickly the mind leaps to the worst-case scenario.
Friday 20 January 2012
Rooms with a view
Not often I find myself at the top of the New Building. It’s all fancy, glass-walled meeting rooms overlooking the city roofscape. Since it's quiet up here this morning, I step outside, just for a moment, to admire the panorama from the balcony encircling the whole floor. A damp, but clearish day with wide views (and long drops - ouch, look out, not down!). After the briefest of strolls around I try the nearest door and find it locked. The next door and the next also resist my hand. The door I came out through is the only one left unlocked, then, in Winter - either that or… oh no, they’re all fixed to open from the inside only! On the long walk, heart in mouth, around the building back to where I started from, I’m oblivious to the 360-degree vistas, absorbed now by mental visions of miming my embarrassing plight through the glass wall to one VIP group or the other: locked out! let me in! The door I came out of opens, of course. How quickly the mind leaps to the worst-case scenario.
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7 comments:
:-) What a wonderful pocket-essay!
lovely view.
I think I would have reacted just as you did, but then I have an anxiety disorder....
I guess you took that wonderful picture after you were safely inside that glass door.
Yup, the camera was inside with the rest of my stuff :-)
Ouch! Scary! At least you got the lovely photo.
Something similar happened when I got locked in a tunnel passage in the old crypt at St.Martin's in the Fields. I did a lot of banging on doors and shouting then, all embarassment dissolved into panic.
oh yes, I would have gone into that panic too, then felt mildly foolish when the door opened without incident!
my panic would have involved vertigo as well...
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