Westminster Hall

 I remember the day I saw Westminster Hall. 

The wonderful thing about being Australian is our complete ambivalence to the age of anything. Although our country is tens of thousands of years old, we only have two hundred and thirty odd years of recorded European History. Our cities are mostly less than two hundred years old. Adelaide was founded in 1836. Melbourne around the same time. 

So when you go to London and walk down those chartered streets and see the age of things on plaques and statues, when you recognise faces and buildings and know from this history books it's all a bit trippy. 

My visit to Westminster Hall came one day when I was temping nearby. The office was in the basement in a building on Birdcage Walk, spitting distance from Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I remember going to visit Westminster Abbey in my lunchbreak. 

I was asked to collect something from this venerated building. I'd gone there with a colleague. 

I didn't get to see much. We collected the required papers - but I did get to stick my head inside Westminster Hall before we left. 

All I remember is that it seemed big, and old, and drafty. 

And I remembered that this was the place where kings and queens have held counsel, lay in state, been accused of treason and ordered to be beheaded... you name it, it's happened in there. For nearly 1000 years this has seen so much history which has been painstakingly documented for centuries. 

As an Australian, this is very hard to get your head around. 

So seeing this on the television, where our old Queen is lying in state, looking around this building, thinking how I wish I had more of a chance to look around the venerable place, soak in some of the history. 

But we had to go back to work, so I only had the opportunity to stick my head in the door. 

Now I see crowds lining up to view the queen's coffin, lining up for miles. And I wonder, if I was living there, would I be in that queue? Thinking about it - I probably would be there - just to have a decent gawp at the building - for no other reason. I'm just an architecture and history nerd. 

Today's song: