giants
I spent a few hours in Portsmouth City yesterday. Charles Dickens was born there. I'd like to have visited the house where he was born, now a museum, but it was closed. There is also a fine statue of him but I didn't find it in my wanderings. Arther Conan Doyle also lived in Portsmouth for a while. He wrote his first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet while he was living there. I did find the spot where he used to live but his house is gone and there is just a small purple plaque on the wall of the building that stands there now.
So, I was breathing the same air that two literary giants breathed but I have no souvenirs to show for it, no better understanding of them as writers or people. I feel rather disappointed that I didn't try harder to track these great men down, I merely glanced at the Conan Doyle plaque and then moved on. I could have walked out of my way to find the Dickens statue, that wouldn't have put me out. But I didn't. An opportunity missed.
What I did do however was scale the third City giant, the Spinnaker Tower, not a literary giant this one but literally a giant. I'm terrified of heights, proper terrified, I get a nosebleed wearing shoes with any kind of a heel. While I stood trembling in the foyer at ground level, I vaguely recall reading that it is eight times the height of Nelson's Column, taller than Big Ben, but to be honest I was so feverish with fear that I might have imagined both of those facts. Fortunately there was a lift up to the viewing platforms, my sweaty palms would never have found purchase on a handrail up a zillion flights of stairs. When I reached the top the view was astounding, my legs never stopped shaking. They have a Sky Bridge in the floor. A sheet of toughened glass set in the floor, 100 metres above the ground, that they invite you to walk across. I repeat, sheet of glass, 100 metres down, walk across. Apparently the glass will take the weight of four elephants or so the guide said, I didn't entirely trust the look in his eye, and besides there is no way they had ever enticed four elephants into that lift and up there to test it, so I wasn't taking any chances on losing either my lunch or my life, so I didn't take the walk. But I did take these photos. Hard even for me to screw up a photo of this view. So here you have a bird's eye view of the City where both Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes were born.
Photos are the author's own.
So, I was breathing the same air that two literary giants breathed but I have no souvenirs to show for it, no better understanding of them as writers or people. I feel rather disappointed that I didn't try harder to track these great men down, I merely glanced at the Conan Doyle plaque and then moved on. I could have walked out of my way to find the Dickens statue, that wouldn't have put me out. But I didn't. An opportunity missed.
What I did do however was scale the third City giant, the Spinnaker Tower, not a literary giant this one but literally a giant. I'm terrified of heights, proper terrified, I get a nosebleed wearing shoes with any kind of a heel. While I stood trembling in the foyer at ground level, I vaguely recall reading that it is eight times the height of Nelson's Column, taller than Big Ben, but to be honest I was so feverish with fear that I might have imagined both of those facts. Fortunately there was a lift up to the viewing platforms, my sweaty palms would never have found purchase on a handrail up a zillion flights of stairs. When I reached the top the view was astounding, my legs never stopped shaking. They have a Sky Bridge in the floor. A sheet of toughened glass set in the floor, 100 metres above the ground, that they invite you to walk across. I repeat, sheet of glass, 100 metres down, walk across. Apparently the glass will take the weight of four elephants or so the guide said, I didn't entirely trust the look in his eye, and besides there is no way they had ever enticed four elephants into that lift and up there to test it, so I wasn't taking any chances on losing either my lunch or my life, so I didn't take the walk. But I did take these photos. Hard even for me to screw up a photo of this view. So here you have a bird's eye view of the City where both Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes were born.
Sky Bridge with 100 metre drop below (I wasn't getting any closer than this)
Photos are the author's own.
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