Sorry the blog’s been quiet recently. OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS has been in production, and I’ve been very busy with something very cool that I hope to announce very soon.
In the meantime, my friend Jennie McCann causally suggested that I join her abseiling down the side of Battersea Power Station on 31st August, and like an idiot I hastily agreed.
I get vertigo*. Not the “Ooh, aren’t we high up?!” kind of vertigo, but the proper lizard-brain-telling-you-it’s-a-good-idea-to-jump kind of vertigo. I first discovered this on a trip to Paris in 1999 when I was wandering around Notre Dame and suddenly found myself high up in its ramparts. It occurred to me just how old and crumbly the building was, and how the whole thing could come tumbling down any second now, so why not save myself the aggravation and hurl myself off now. I shook this off as an abberation, but then later that day I found myself at the top of Eiffel Tower (which is full of holes and was only built to last a few years!) and – holy shit – that’s a tall frickin’ structure. I clung to the centre of it like a limpet, only occasionally shuffling to its edges.
Weirdly, I’m fine in planes. No problem at all hurtling through the air at thirty-thousand feet. Work that one out, if you can.
But Battersea Power Station is just too hard to resist. I’m a massive Pink Floyd fan and the station adorns the cover of their 1977 album Animals, and I had a huge poster of this on my wall as a teenager. Also, many of my favourite films have been made there and if flinging myself off the side of it means I get to explore this hallowed ground, then so be it.
I’ll be doing this for Cancer Research UK. Too many of my friends and family have suffered from cancer, and I’m very impressed with their work. So do please donate whatever spare shekels you have into the pot. It all makes a difference!
Please click here to go to my Just Giving page.
*Quick update. My friend Dom pointed out that I actually suffer from Acrophobia, not vertigo. I blame Hitchcock.
Mark Stay Writes 