Our journey that day took us to a room in the tower. Lead as we were in our downcast uncertainty as to whether or not we were truly at fault, The Bully then began to preside over the room before it was even full. This began with strange directives towards where certain people might sit, and how the overall conceit was to be forcibly presented. People started entering, quietly and with some hesitation until the room was all but full.

What unfolded was pure theatre of the most digusting kind. The Bully began along a self-propelled thread of hollow assurances and talk of potential, the nature of which was completely alien to the audience before him. Where there should have been substance and truth, there was patronising vehemence. Where there should have been practical and inclusive plans, there was autocratic rant. But this was no captive audience and despite the prating and insistence with which The Bully proceeded, there hung in the air a general sense of disinterestedness and mistrust.

The Rebels sat in open dismay at the back of the room. This was a rather unique situation in that those in question were all sometime colleagues of The Bully.

A young girl sat at the front of the room turned and acknowledeged one of the rebels openly dismissing the Bully at the front. This is unlikely to have gone unnoticed by the Bully.

A hench-person of the Bully was co-opted to present some art to the crowd on the pretext of seeking the opinion of the great unwashed as to which design was the most pleasing with which to dress the great conceit. However it was plain that those assembled preferred no one design over the other and indeed thought them all equally shite. However this opinion did not make the least dent in the arrogance of the Bully and his hench-person.

Below is the view from the Tower that day.

One victim / attendee recalls the meeting thus:

My overriding memory of that day is walking up the stairs in the Tower with two other victims of The Bully briefing me about recent goings on. I left my domain expecting an interesting meeting with The Guru and Niccolo the Wizard presiding and bringing everyone on board with an exciting and potentially quite innovative project, and by the time I got to the meeting room I was wondering exactly what the project was going to deliver, how on earth it could work at all, and why in Gods name was I there. Kinda sticks in the memory.

I strongly recall a strutting Bully completely failing to win the hearts and minds of the audience. Given that the audience consisted entirely of converts who were already won over by hard work done in the past it was quite a feat of incompetence to lose them all in one go.