Tower of Power

We were on the beach at Coldingham the other week, collecting sea glass and generally breathing in the briny splendour when I got the inevitable sub Goldsworthy itch. It was very absorbing, and interesting to feel how the sense of balance in the structure changed with every stone I put on it. I had four or five collapses before I got one I was happy with. I artfully arranged the photo so it looks like a teetering head-high behemoth, which it was not; had you been close by when it crashed down into gravity's embrace, it could have lightly bruised your knee.

I'd like to say that I built it deliberately in the eye of the advancing tide so that I could capture the moment of destruction, but I hadn't noticed that the tide was creeping so close, nor that I'd built it on the highest part of the beach and we had to wait for about forty minutes for the waves to finally get to it. Don't get too eager about the video; it's stop motion, and decidedly unspectacular, but at least it made me want to go back and give it another go. (You might spot that the top fell off, and I went back to re-stack it: the whole thing went only seconds later.)

Clever bugger, that Goldsworthy.