I have mentioned before about the fear of heights that is in most of us. I'm not talking about steeplejacks, scaffolders or similar types, who seem to have feathers instead of hair, but people as you and I, who feel undressed if they have to ascend a six rung ladder without a parachute.
This fear, I beg to report, is not lessened by meeting it face to face and going up places where you expect to meet angels.
No way!
That old feeling of panic and butterflies as big as bats in the tum still occurs, no matter how often you get yourself any higher than eyeball position. And no matter how self assured you sound when describing the wonderful view after you've got safely down again, to people who've got a darn sight more sense than you and refuse point-blank to go up and see for themselves, you know you ain't kidding no-one. Especially yourself.
You're in the same position as the bloke who, when standing on the edge of a river on a cold day, testing the temperature with his toe which has gone numb, accidentally slips in just as he's made up his mind to go home, get dressed and have a cup of hot coffee.
After he's got his breath back and frantically splashes about to stop rigor mortis from setting in, hollers to his mates who are laughing their stupid heads off from the comparative warmth of the bank side, "Come on in, the water's lovely".
There's no way he's going to kid them, cos they can see the goose pimples coming up like a rash of chicken pox all over him. He justs wants other people to suffer the same as him. He knows it, they know it, and he ain't kidding nobody.
I've been telling everybody who'll listen to me about the wonderful view that can be seen from the top viewing platform of the CN Tower in Toronto, and I know that while I'm talking to them, they're feeding a no-go programme into the memory bank of their brain telling them to avoid this structure like it was a dose of rabies. They can see the goose pimples that still come up when I think of it.
This architectural monstrosity is the tallest free standing structure in the world*, being 1815 feet tall, and looks like Cleopatra's Needle gone berserk, we said to our son, Mike, who possibly had thoughts on getting some own back for all the disciplinary injustices of youth, and had told us that we just couldn't come all the way from England and not go up it - what, up that! Where's the top?
Fact was, from where we stood at the bottom you just couldn't see it as it seemed to disappear in to the blue like it was trying to dig a hole in the sky. He laughed and said "Come on, it's not so bad as it seems" and led the way to the lift.
The sadists who designed the lift must have bent over their drawing boards and muttered "This'll scare the hell outta any Limeys who go up". It was made of glass and shot up the outside of Tower like a vertical express, reaching the first viewing stage in 50 seconds.
This is around 1200 feet up and the girl attendant said "Don't worry about your stomachs, folks, you can collect them when we get down again. Ha-ha!" As my stomach felt like it was draped around my shoes like a pair of saggy jeans waiting to be pulled up, I didn't think it was funny.
My wife and daughter-in-law made a bee-line for the bar to get a gin and lime which they obviously felt would be protective wall to peer over before daring to look out of the windows at the void below, and my son, recognising that this was the end of the line so far as they were concerned, said to me as I leaned nonchalantly against the bar, as far away from the windows as I could get, "Well we're going up to the top platform ain't we? Its only another thirty three stories up."
"Why bother" I said "the view's great here, the bar's open and the restaurants got some good grub and -"
"Come on" laughed old iron nerves, who I felt had missed his vocation as test bed engineer and would have done better as a Spanish Inquisitor, "can't go home without going to the top".
So up we go again, this time in a coffin that belted up the middle of the building like a rocket out of a bottomless launching pad.
My stomach, which had been shakily clambering up to normal position, flopped like a dropped jelly back to the floor where it seemed to resign itself with an air of "If you're going to keep doing that , I'll stay here and wait for you to come down".
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| Worlds tallest postcard |
We got out on the top viewing platform and began to circle the inside partition which was the furthest we could get away from the windows. That wasn't far, as it was like walking round an enclosed pin head.
I thought that so long as I'd got this high I might as well take a peek out of the windows , so edged over and took a tentative look.
The view was indeed something, as being a clear day you could see for miles in all directions, especially down. Or it seemed so.
I turned to say so to my son and he wasn't there, where was this carefree lad who'd conned his aged parent into ascending into the domain of eagles and angels?
Leaning against the inner wall with a sickly grin on his face as he said "I always get jelly legs if I get any height".
I thought "Great. You get me up this bloody monstrosity knowing what it does to you, and make out I'm missing something if I don't go up".
Should have know better. The same old case of the bloke in the drink trying to kid his mates into suffering with him.
Still, the view was terrific, but not if I sprout wings will I ever get used to looking down on skyscrapers and watching planes fly beneath me when I ain't in one.
However, if you're in Toronto, you really must go up the CN Tower. It's an experience you'll never forget, as the man said when he fell in the drink.
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