There comes a point in the development of any coastal settlement where the local council convenes an urgent committee meeting, looks out across the harbour, and collectively agrees: “What this skyline is missing is a five-hundred-foot steel toothpick wearing a monocle.”
Thus, Portsmouth gifted the world the Spinnaker Tower.
Architecturally, it is intended to evoke the grand, billowing sweep of a ship’s sail catching the Atlantic wind. Functionally, it exists so that four hundred people at a time can travel vertically upwards at terrifying speed in a glass box, walk across a transparent glass floor they immediately regret stepping on, and gaze solemnly upon the distant roof of an Asda in Gosport while sipping an eighteen-pound pot of Earl Grey.
To the left of this futuristic white obelisk sits several centuries of British maritime paranoia. A modern, multi-billion-pound aircraft carrier loiters near the dry docks, keeping an uneasy eye on a row of eighteenth-century wooden masts, all of which seem quietly baffled by the giant, gleaming syringe towering over them.
The sea, meanwhile, continues to lap against the quay with its usual wet indifference, knowing full well that no matter how sharp human beings make their buildings, the water will still be here long after everyone has finished their scones.