Have you seen what’s going on at Brisbane Powerhouse lately? On the roof? With the diners?

No, they are not sitting at little tables with umbrellas. They are eating whilst hanging off the side of the roof.

It’s their new restaurant and it has got global attention. It’s called Vertigo and that’s exactly what overtook me when I looked up and saw legs dangling in space. I had to avert my gaze. I’m afraid of heights and suffer from vertigo myself, among other things.

So the idea of eating up there hanging off the side of the Brisbane Powerhouse roof terrifies me.

We were at the venue the other night for a small function at the Brisbane Portrait Prize exhibition which is hanging inside. After cutting through the crowds attending Night Feast, the culinary and arts extravaganza outside (on terra firma) my wife drew my attention to Vertigo the restaurant in full swing.

Actually, we had been there a couple of weeks earlier when they were first trialing Vertigo and the venue’s ambitious CEO and artistic director Kate Gould came over to tell us all about it after abseiling down the front of the rather towering front wall.

She insisted that she would accompany me up onto the roof so I would feel safe but I just stood there shaking my head. The very thought of it was chilling.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea and Kate Gould has had quite a few. In fact, soon the photographer artist Spencer Tunick is coming to Brisbane to create one of his mass nude happenings for the venue’s Melt festival.

My wife tells me that she was recently in a conversation with some colleagues about this and someone suggested that maybe he could take some photos of nude people dining at Vertigo. Now there’s a thought.

All I know is that I won’t be venturing up there, in clothes or otherwise. Because I’m like James Stewart in the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo. It’s a real thing.

It has caused the family some embarrassment in our travels. There was the time I swore profusely and refused to go on the ski lift at Thredbo. There was that other time in the Blue Mountains when I got to the cable car station and just lay on the ground moaning after viewing the chasm I was supposed to travel over.

And there was also that time on Phuket when I refused to ride the elephant because it was too high. I think they thought I had said I was too high.

I’m better in planes nowadays although I can’t look out the window.

It’s just edges and chasms and the like that I cannot do. Add restaurants hanging off the sides of buildings too. But you go ahead and enjoy yourselves please while I look the other way.