Albert Bridge
I loved you tippy-toeing round the pagoda in Battersea Park in your Issy Miyake jacket. You bought it instead of paying your gas bill in 1999 and wore a ski suit all that winter, indoors and out. You started dying your own hair the summer after: black or white or fire-engine red.
Albert Bridge watched over us. We’d cross sometimes to browse those stupidly expensive boutiques you loved. Or go to The Gaumont to see Spirited Away or My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York. We’d always see Bob Geldof shuffling round like a tramp. I loved you.
by Julie Batty
Julie says, “When I learned about the 26 Bridges project I was thinking about my friend, Linda Dobell, who was very dear to me and would have just turned 70 if she hadn’t died in 2009. She was the most vivid person I ever knew, and I spent some of the happiest days of my life with her. She lived in Battersea so we often walked along the Thames through Battersea Park and over the Albert Bridge to Chelsea, talking, laughing, talking some more.”
On Landing
A mate’s bridge. “Come over” his message read. “We’re building it.”
Four weeks gone. I was boarding over the space she had left slowly, plank by plank. My close friends were unspannably far. But these two? Barely friends, but walkably close. I took a deep breath and a hammer.
The bridge crossed a small ditch, two dads connecting school friends. Four hands needing two more to build it, maybe. Or just constructing a way to reach across. No one was great on the tools that day. Even worse on the words. But together on Landing, we built a mate’s bridge.
by Mark Easterbrook
Mark says, “My bridge is a small, poorly constructed footbridge on Landing Road, Titirangi, a short walk from my house. Several years ago, my wife left. Many of the people we knew locally were fellow school parents and, while she had grown close with many of the other mums, I was only really on friendly acquaintance terms with their husbands.
A month after she left, two of those guys invited me over to help them build their footbridge. I realised after a couple of hours what it really was — a clumsy but genuine attempt to support me at a rough time. The fact we were literally building a bridge stuck with me, and that’s how we got to this piece.”
Thanks for sharing these poignant stories, with bridges at their heart. So much emotion packed into so few words.
Such evocative writing about loss of relationships - but also what the bridge building of friendships mean.