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The bridge that carried the asphalt road across the Great Western Canal near my East Devon home, always offered a mixture of excitement and fear. Built to carry china clay in barges from the quarry to the canal basin to the east, the canal and its towpath offered hours of enjoyment.
The water confined to its own banks, neither flowed into a larger river, nor was it tidal like an estuary. In the summer, green algae would grow, as temperatures rose and the water level dropped.
In the winter, the water froze over, providing opportunity for our adventurous black and white cat, Fred, to skate over to the other side. Fred didn't seem to know that cats were allergic to water, and would occasionally come home bedraggled from his ventures. To my knowledge he never thought to use the bridge.
Climbing down from the road, the steep path became very slippery after rain, and we hoped not to slide straight into the water beneath us. Yet under the bridge, the echoes it gave to our childhood voices was magical. So we would shout, and then stand still and quiet as it echoed the sound back to us.
Standing firmly on the wide, dry towpath under the bridge, it offered us safety on a wet day. As we watched a particularly hard shower of rain coming down, each drop hitting the surface would create an enchanting sight beyond our bridge. Looking back, I now wonder whether all children enjoyed this as much as I did; the comforting noise, the security, the wonder, the fear. Or is this part of my own god-given nature, an ability to recall and record events and their accompanying emotional responses.
When my five-year old brother was first given glasses for his astigmatism, Mum asked him why he had never mentioned that he could not see properly. He replied, “I thought everyone seed like this”. Perhaps I have inadvertently assumed that everyone sees the world in the way that I do, rather than embracing the contribution I may be able to make.
Standing under the bridge, with two or three other children, I would look at the inky-blackness of the water, remembering the warning that below the water itself was several feet of mud. The fear of falling in, and getting entangled in the weeds was always present for me, perhaps due to an earlier incident at the age of eighteen months. At the beach a wave swept me off my feet and by the time Mum had reached me she was chest-deep in the water.
Used respectfully, the bridge, canal and towpath, offered endless enjoyment to those of us lucky enough to live nearby. With its mix of excitement and fear, security and risk, it provided a wonderful learning environment for my friends and me.
In recent years it has been dredged, and no longer serves the industry for which it was built, but like many resources is now a popular tourist attraction. A horse-drawn barge offers pleasure cruises, and canoeists safely paddle along its course. It has been good to recall the mix of joy and fear I found beneath the bridge.
It has been good to re-visit “my bridge” in my memory, to appreciate its contribution to my life, and offer the world my own distinctive perspective, and respect others who cannot engage with this, or who see things differently yet with equal validity.
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