On the rock

I was on the rock, namely of Mount Darwin, and here the administrative staff of the university ruled the roost, or should I say retained their monkish manner of adminstrative control from their eagles' nests.  I walked around, but suddenly I was blocked from going in one room and coming out another.  Politics moves us like the winds, and sometimes entering or exiting is a feature of political dispensation.  Time was running out now with this rule of law and soon they would not tolerate my entrance and my exit at the times of my own choosing. 

Next door, a hospital, indeed a whole ward, built precariously on this rock, the Rock of Gibraltar.  She was trying to persuade me, in her middle-class, middle-brow way that I could "do this job" and much as I wished it true, I doubted her optimistic viewpoint on what I could or couldn't do, based primarily on my past experience. I'd never managed to do things that I didn't already feel drawn to with a passion, and nursing, despite being safe and supposedly altogether easy, would not have been possible for me, because of all sorts of manifestations and obstructions getting in the way -- those that we cannot calculate.

What bothered me was going to the far end of the ward, which is where my legs took me, for they were active, and then seeing through the glass windows right there our precarious situation.  We were about to slip off.  Really.  We were only five feet from a sheer drop.  And the whole ward might be slipping.  If the angle wasn't right, and we were slightly off from horizontal, we would end up in the sea.  I excused myself, almost, but hard to say because of the great fluster.  Made directly for the door.  Down past the administrative staff and out into the real world.On the rock