The young blue of the midday sky had gone a stiff grey when we left the underground. It took us a while to find the building but eventually I pointed out the tall, iron gateway of the Barnard's Inn Hall at Gresham College. we walked through a well lit tunnel - a mosaic of lime green tiles that lead to a small courtyard area (a little under an RE classroom sized) that was then connected to a larger courtyard and the rest of the main structure. None of which I actually saw.
A young man was waiting there - blonde, lanky and jumper-clad. He looked the sort to attend lectures, perhaps as a supplliment to his regular uni studies, but beyond that didn't seem to have any reason to be there. He saw that we were lost and obviously not regulars so pointed us through an oldlooking wooden door way that was immediately met by a long stretch of steep stairs. From inside I could hear a singular voice and nothing else. It was a woman's and, though I had no idea what she was talking about, it was obvious the lecture (A lecture in lawyer ethics and the reason we were there) had already begun.
The room was a semi-packed sea of wrinkle-free shirts and pink scalps surrounded by the silvery vestige of a once respectable head of flowing hair. There was no speaker in the room and instead a video feed representing her being projected onto a screen.
The room was a church - soft and dim but tight like a bent ruler and ready to snap with a rain of 'Ssshhhhh' at the thought of any intruding sound. As you can guess, this wasn't the real hall. Instead me and my family had been herded into a side room or basement forced to watch the speech through a filter of technology meant to bridge the gap between us and those the event was truly built for. It didn't work, I was completely dispondent and now - a day after the lecture - understand near nothing of what was actually going on. All ym memories of that room is the grey spreading through the carpet or an antique thing covered in a tarp and hiden from view. I felt nothing of where I was and what was happeneing and when I finally left and felt the cold wind on my face and looked up at the empty black sky, the world seemed to make sense again.
being old must suck.