GRAND OLD PIER BUILDING

I was sitting in a freezing meeting room. Posh water jugs, tumblers, hotel notepaper, a glossy programme of events, and a scattering of pens were spread before me, over the large round white-clad table. Right in the middle was a fancy feature, a tall plastic decoration, lit blue from a tiny LED in its base.

And all around the room, identical white tables of colleagues chewing pens, steepling their fingers under their chins and resting elbows on tables, while the suited speakers talked numbers and mission statements and annual returning revenues.

Out beyond the window was Cardiff Bay, doing its best to prove that we were indeed, in Cardiff. I’ve been here before - if you remember, I was ... over there, beyond the bay, on the other side, by the grand old pier building. And behind it, the city.

There had been a lovely exhibition in that red-bricked building. Black and white footage of a bustling dockyard, full of men in flat caps, horses, cargo, train carriages, and the tall masts and funnels of ships from long ago. These days it’s a sort of trendy regenerated wharf - and it was very much on the other side of the bay to the posh hotel in which we were sitting on a cold Tuesday morning.

“Vision is where you want to be,” said the speaker, flashing up an animated PowerPoint slide, “Mission is what you’re doing now, and your strategy is how you get from here to your vision.”

The water looked cold.

On the plus side though, it really was a plush hotel; five stars I think - certainly, when your room has its own conservatory and a sea-view balcony, it’s more than fancy. When I arrived I went through my usual hotel routine - shoes and socks off, curl toes into the carpet, put on classical music on Spotify and boil the kettle. I seemed weirdly out of place in that grand room, listening to the hiss of boiling water and Mozart’s 4th Horn Concerto as I usually do; a wild-haired, barefoot loon in a palatial hotel room.

Then, this morning, before the dawn, I stood out on the balcony watching the lights ripple on the bay. I leaned on the cold rail like a captain on the deck. Even if you don’t feel like you belong in a place, I suppose it’s okay to pretend you do.

The pier building was bathed in a soft white light. It looked like it too was out of place, like a museum item, belonging to a different time, encapsulated by the wash of floodlamps, forming a brilliant display case around its delightful red bricks and its grand old Victorian clock-face. Those things would have been hidden by soot years ago. Now here they were; out of place, old, forgotten, and yet illuminated.

I closed the door behind me. At least for today there’d be a bunch of meetings, and I’d once again be sitting in a freezing meeting room, gazing out across the bay.