Creativity: High and mighty surreal

CONSTRUCTIVE ideas for the use of the Canary Wharf Tower have flooded in since last week, with a flood barrier, appropriately enough, one of the more popular suggestions. Rejecting as too far-fetched Paul Thomas's suggestion that it might be used as commercial office space, we have analysed the remaining ideas and approve of the following:

Leisure facilities: Helter-skelter, water-chute, parachuting, hang-gliding and abseiling were the most frequent ideas here, but we particularly liked Jonathan Wood's suggestion: to use the lift shafts for indoor bungee jumping.

Accommodation: Flats for the homeless was a popular suggestion, but less imaginative than a prison for architects and city financiers (Jackie Britton), a mental hospital for same or retirement home for civil servants (several readers), a training school for firemen (Wally Reynolds) or for tea ladies (Andrew Middleton), communal kennel for rottweilers or aviary for all of London's pigeons (both R Bentley), a nesting site for displaced cliff-breeding sea-birds (Andrew Middleton).

Monument: As a Tomb of the Unknown Architect (several) or, turned into a sundial by reducing surrounding area to a five-acre concrete disc and surmounting tower with a large white tusk, as a monument to the Thatcher Years (Alison Claybourne).

Signal Tower: As a lighthouse or look-out tower (several), or as a signal to passing spacecraft that there is no intelligent life on earth (G Rawlings).

Filming Prop: For a re-make of The Towering Inferno, to be destroyed in the final scene (several), covered in rubber as an advert for safe sex (several), or used as the Ministry of Truth in a remake of 1984.

Transport: As a control tower for London's third airport (several), a mooring tower for a London tourist dirigible (J Patterson), or with a line strung from it to the Empire State Building for transatlantic tightrope walking (Graeme Rawlings) or to act as a central pillar for a road suspension bridge between the Chunnel terminal and M1, with ramps between floors as access to customs facilities (Mrs I V Knill):

Wally Reynolds was the only reader to suggest building more of them, 'grouped roughly in a circle as a 20th-century Stonehenge'. Brickhenge, surely?

For surreal uselessness, however, we liked best of all R Bentley's idea to use it as a retraining centre to retrain trainers as retrainers.

This week's object is a used light bulb. Suggestions should be sent to Creativity, The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB. No unoriginal light-bulb jokes, please.