I knew this would happen. Ever since I noticed those leaning tower cranes of London, which looked like they might be about to collapse through the unbalanced weight at the top of them, I knew that as I wandered through my photo-archives I’d find more such pairs of leaning tower cranes, leaning in opposite directions to each other, and looking like they should have collapsed and caused a flurry of shocked news reports, but which never actually did that.
And I just did:
Taken from the top of the Monument, on the same day as the photo below of the Walkie-Talkie.
At the time, all I thought I was photoing was a nice sunset and some nice cranes, posing nicely in front of The Wheel. But those two cranes on the right there seem to be in that same state of strong disagreement about what exactly vertical is, and for the same reason.
Yet, if either of those cranes had collapsed, late on in the year 2012, I am sure that we would have heard about it, and that I would have remembered it. Clearly, they did not collapse. They were just leaning over a bit.
All those cranes that we see were working on, among other buildings, two rather striking buildings that are now finished. I’m talking about the two stumps now blocking the view of the Shell Building. There is, on the right, in between the two leaning cranes discussed above, 240 Blackfriars. And to the left of 240 Blackfriars, as we look, the innards of the Tate Modern Extension, from which further lovely views out over lovely London were to materialise.