It’s not the Space Needle, so what EEES it, man? — the BT Telecom Tower has always tripped me out a little whenever I’ve seen it around London. I’ll turn a corner or the taxi I’m in will change a lane or something and then there’s this big huge thing towering in the middle distance. What is it? Why is it? Why is it following me and threatening to board my flights home?
The latter, perhaps, is part of the ravings of a diseased imagination, which I won’t discount. Nonetheless despite all that’s said about it — ‘the first purpose-built tower to transmit high frequency radio waves’ and all that — let us not ignore the truth: it looks freakish. But that’s part of the appeal, I’d guess — it DOESN’T ‘belong’ there, so therefore I’m extremely glad it is there. Every last celebration of ‘the preservation of our national heritage’ — stuff like praising chimney sweeps and their swift and easy ability to die in London 1810, so that’s why fireplaces should be maintained to the present day — must surely run up against this thing, run away screaming, and with in a heap somewhere outside an Angus Steak House.
I suspect that to those who have always seen it it’s just part of the skyline that’s as familiar as anything else one encounters around and about London. To me it’s this thing that’s been rammed into the ground and is staffed by robots up there. They burble and wheedle, and clamber around steamy tunnels, and occasionally they come out and polish the dishes, and then go back and download everything into a huge central located in Norwich for some reason. So Norwich rules the world and this big-ass cylinder is what they use to enforce central control on the dupes in the city surrounding it. I knew it.