Back in the day, the Central Electricity Generating Board used to have adverts in magazines showing a pristine landscape stretching for miles.  The accompanying text asked you to admire the electricity distribution system.  You couldn’t see it of course: it was underground.  All those ugly pylons had been demolished.  It went without saying that this was a great improvement.

“Like whips of anger/With lightning's danger/There runs the quick perspective of the future” wrote Stephen Spender in a rather fevered 1930s poem about their effect on the elysian English landscape.  Then there’s Cecil Day-Lewis: “ascetic pylons pass…… charged to deal death” is his contribution.  So they’ve never gone down well with the pastoralists: too big, too modern, too industrial, too intrusive.

I’m a bit of a fan myself, though.  I spent a good part of lockdown in photographic pursuit of these magnificent beasts and you can see some of the results in the collection ‘Circuit’ which I have posted on the Photographs page of this website.  One that features there is this 275kv line just beside South Manchester substation.  I see an almost calligraphic precision in its structure, as though I were looking at a gigantic ideogram.

 You could see them as supporting the electricity lines that stretch between them; or you could see the lines as joining the pylons together so they become one massive structure. 

 It’s the way that the lines hang motionless from those horizontals while the electromagnetic waves hurtle through them at something close to the speed of light – 300 million metres a second.  300 million metres a second.   Mostly you can only imagine the immense power that they are carrying but when you stand underneath them in damp weather you hear an insidious crackle and pop.  That is water droplets speeding up the electrical breakdown of the air, and it gives you an almost physical connection to the immense charge above you.   As they near their destination the pylons get smaller, the voltage steps down and down from 400kv through substation and substation to 275kv;  then 132kv and down again to 33kv and 11kv then into the ground where it speeds into your living room, at 240v to power up your lights, your phone and your TV.

I am not alone in my enthusiasm, by the way.  The very wonderful  Pylon Appreciation Society  will tell you everything you need to know about pylons and perhaps more.  And Pylon of the Month – quite separate from the PAS – will give you a magnificent monthly fix.

I was out walking recently and came across what looked like some pretty heavy duty maintenance work to a line.  I fell into conversation with the work crew and asked about that cable you can see right at the top of the pylon below.  Every pylon has one and they intrigue me.  What I suspected turns out to be correct.  It’s an earth line.  Yes, even these mighty beasts are earthed.  So if one ever did fall on top of you its weight might kill you but at least you wouldn’t be electrocuted.

 We all know that our household appliances must be earthed but to see this basic principle applied at the macrolevel comes as a bit of a surprise.  It all comes down to the circuit: the mutual compulsion of plus and minus which powers up the whole caboodle - the return to earth. Negative just cannot live without positive.  The electron must find its proton.  Then there is balance and all is well with the world.  It is exactly the same balance which is holding together every object around you and, indeed, your own body.

 It’s not really an electricity distribution system at all – it’s a gigantic metaphor.