It was a warm day, which makes me assume it was either spring or summer; summer I personally suspect, as the event was for children so either a weekend or a school holiday. The Lab (MSSL- Mullard Space Science Laboratory where my parents worked) was having a children’s science day; young children mostly. My mum was one of the organizers/helpers and wished me to come along. I dragged a friend, J. One of the things we could do was a treasure hunt, for planets I believe. Each planet had a specific colour marker next to it, in which we needed to mark of our finding. Having done that, and with a barbecue yet to begin we began exploring.

Now before I continue, I believe a background setting is important. MSSL is set on a hill among sheep farms. The building used to be a private boys school and some of such assets have remained. (Like the old wooded sweeping staircase, football field and outdoor swimming pool). The actual research facility was modern, but adjusted to the atmospheric surrounding. But in places the old school was left untouched.

And so, as I said above, we went exploring. More precise I gave a guided tour to my friend. One of the places I showed was odd to say the least. It was a tiny toilet on the top floor. Nothing fascinating by itself you see, but it had a window that led to the roof. You can probably see where this is going.

We sneaked past a scientist next door, and got inside the small room. Now I told her that I already climbed out of the window before and naturally J wanted to go on an Adventure. With a capital A. We locked the door. Unlocked the window and made sure it wouldn’t close and trap us outside. And climbed outside onto the roof from a toilet window. I would love to excuse our actions on young age, but we were in high school and from my memories about to go into Yr 9.

This part of the roof was actually a small courtyard. No actual plants, but a small walk way of a fire escape, still shining metal, but dusty and spider-web covered in misuse. The walkway lead to the next building in a bridge-like fashion, and then later turned and led towards the ground. The bridge part, had large wall rails so they were easy to hide behind if we kept low.

Surprisingly there were pebbles on the roof (or at least they were, we may have went down and got them from the path below). I’m not sure how we reached the idea but we ended up sitting on the bridge and throwing pebbles if anyone passed by – to scare them off/ or did we pretend to be a ghost?- We also tied a red ribbon that used to be in my hair, onto the rails flay in the wind. We probably thought it would appear to be spooky.

And then we talked undisturbed.