The water tower above the houses

An original literary non-fiction-style account of walking beneath a disused water tower at the edge of a town.

From the train, the tower had always looked like a cup balanced on legs. On foot, I found that its legs were thicker than the garden walls below them. Four pale columns rose from separate plots of nettles and joined a tank so broad that its edge appeared to press down on the sky. The comparison with a cup now seemed absurdly domestic.

A narrow staircase climbed one column. Its metal steps repeated themselves upwards until they became a row of dark stitches. Halfway up, a little platform projected into the air. There was a chair on it. I tried to imagine somebody sitting there to eat a sandwich, with the roofs arranged beneath their shoes, but the thought made my own feet feel less securely attached to the pavement.

Nothing moved on the tower. A loose gate at its base tapped against a post, paused and tapped again. The small sound made the stillness above it more noticeable. On the tank, a painted number had faded to the colour of old milk. One digit was almost gone, leaving the remaining ones to identify something I could no longer name with confidence.

Around the next corner, the tower vanished behind a row of houses. Curtains, a satellite dish, a washing-up brush on a kitchen sill: all the near things returned at once. Only a curved strip of the tank showed above the roofs. From there, it was a cup again. I was surprised by how quickly distance could turn weight into a shape.

How does the writer use language to convey the tower's scale and the observer's changing perspective?