This is the Royal Courts of Justice. Across the road are the building of Kings college. And between them, a formidable dragon stands up to the traffic on a high column that splits the wind that flows up to St Paul Cathedral. Without the multicolored buses, cars, bicycles and other (almost)metallic machines, the date could be sometime in 19th century. Its gothic architecture and the dragon outside invites to toughts of magic, wizards, unexplained powers, strong and wise powers.
Upon entering the building (ignore the metal detectors), I felt tranported into that era of magic and fairy tales. It is the place where Justice prevails, in its cold and beautiful hard stone and wood temple. light would fall upon the blindfolded figure of the assembly, and Justice would be fairly delivered in a magical, satisfying, and beatifying way.
After wandering about the great corridors, and loosing ourselves like arguments thrown out between sollicitors, we finally decided on a court room to visit. Court room 19 held a hearing of a financial case that we didnt quite understand until 45minutes into the hearing. His Lordship the Judge had decided to clear his head and speak his thoughts to explain the matter at hand to himself. It was then made clear to himself, and to us poor bored ignorant, that the witness was complaining about some £100 000 that were due to his company by another fellow in the audience. But there were 6 big files of evidence that the sollicitors argued upon, and so many accountancy detailts that bothered us, so we fled the scene and let Justice work its way. That was not magic at work, it was poor human mind, obstructed by the heaviness of lunch and naptime trying to sort out among huge amount of details...a train wreck in the making.
So we were in the corridors again, spotting the black robes of sollicitors speeding with their grey curles wigs. And they indeed could pass for wizards (except for the wig part). One such big belly man invited us to another court room, which appreared to contain much uniformed policemen. The room was much bigger, with a really high ceiling that was adorned by a graceful candelabra (without the candles, alas). Dusty books filled both sidewalls, and on the right, a human cage contained another uniformed policeman in uniform (such an anachronism to my 19th century theme). We sat behind what looked like the prosecutor. Speaking before 2 judges was a man in a pink/salmon/orange polo shirt, with papers all over the table in front of him. He seemed panic-stricken and completely disorganized. We were a bit surprised he was not wearing the black robe. We tried to figure out from his references from the files dispersed in front of him the nature of the case, but it was a bit complicated and we gave up after 15 minutes fo pape discussion. Outside the court room, our kinf host inquired about us and explained the speaker was the prisoner defending himself and appealing for a case that happened in 1995 (a heist of thousands of pounds).
In any case, the place was magical, but the exercise of Justice sure didn't feel like magic. Seemed all very bureaucratic (12 folders of evidences in the last case), and completely mind exhausting task. I love the atmosphere in the ground floor hall though, as it is a place where one is inspired by the balance of light, stone and wood. It is probbaly the only place where one can take a break peacefully under the eye of lady Justice.
