What's the time?

This afternoon I had to go to St Thomas' Hospital by the Thames, a large centre of excellence with a purpose built children's hospital. (Sadly, the architects' idea of a suitable school for a children's hospital is just sticking it in the middle of a 6-storey glass atrium. The walls are cobbled together noticeboards, with no roof, and there are parasols to keep out the sun in summer. Nothing can shut out the echoing noise, though.) The oldest part of the hospital was apparently set up by Florence Nightingale herself (or so I overheard someone say today).

When a child has special needs, he or she has a Statement of Special Educational Needs issued by the local education authority. Every year it is reviewed, and today was the review of my home-tuition student who has ALD.

It was also the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the setting up of the original hospital school.

At the end of the review, one of the attendees suddenly said, "And I've been wondering what the time was." I looked to where he was pointing, and there it was, outside the window I had been sitting with my back to, actually looking much closer than the picture from my phone shows:



The clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, complete with Big Ben, that I didn't hear chime once during the 2-hour meeting.

I stayed for a bit of the celebration, but sneaked off home in the dark, in rain being emptied from the heavens by the bucketload. It was, in the understated way of the British, a bit wet.