‘No exit’

Everyone gets off. I head for the stairs and arriving at them remember how long, how impossible they are. There, you can see them climbing along the wall, traversing the wall between floor and the ceiling that is probably hundreds of feet high. I head back to take the more conventional route, which involves negotiating a series of moving footpaths that have been installed for the public’s convenience. The system is simple. You get on a footpath that takes the name of your destination; get off wherever it ends, and continue to look for the footpath that names your destination. If you persist you arrive, eventually. I get on the path for Paris, and it escorts me to the other side of the hallway, where it proves impossible to find another path to Paris. Not very helpful. A bit like de Gaulle airport. I struggle on for a while and come to an empty cul de sac… an open reception area where no one bothers to stay, though the view out onto the sidewalk is quite promising, and makes me wonder how I have managed to become so ‘elevated’. However, I notice that the stairway leading down from this reception area to the station entrance is made of stairs each of which must be fifteen or twenty feet high. The precipice is impossible to negotiate. The architects have omitted to provide a way out. It’s, really, very frustrating. People appear to have found their way out, though. Or have they? The moving footpaths are empty, the novelty of it all having worn off. It looks as though the only thing to do is to get back on a train.