It’s the banging on the safety barriers that tells us they are coming. A wave of frenetic beating rising up from below, masking the announcer’s urgent voice and even threatening the pumping music which is bouncing around the concrete walls of the multi-storey carpark. Overhead a police helicopter clatters, searching for something off near The River whilst just to the North the clustered towers of The City glare provocatively in the fading dusk light, finally hiding the last of the unseasonal October sun which followed the earlier autumnal rain. The announcer’s muffled exhortations become ever more drowned out by the banging as the riders approach the roof but then, as they burst out of the dark cavern-like mouth onto level 10, the crescendo dissipates as it released from the pressured confines of below and the experience becomes visual. Continue reading →