Passing over, passing through

There's something magical about living near the river in London. The air is cool and fresh, there's a sense of space that you don't find anywhere else, and in the middle, a great body of slow moving, impassive, grey water. Always there but always different. Even so, I don't think you really experience the river unless you're forced to travel across it. Standing in between, watching the water pass underneath, rocked in the cradle of the bridge, you start to really understand what Apollinaire was going on about.

Or maybe it's only if you're on my bridge. That really is the cat's pyjamas. Everyone in London adopts a bridge. Some like the brutalist simplicity of Waterloo Bridge, others prefer the restrained decor of the Chelsea Bridge, only the Americans really go for Tower Bridge in a big way. And mine is the Albert Bridge. It's an unashamed, disneyfied wedding cake of a bridge. A fairground gondola unfurled. A gossamer spun, radioactive spider's web of a bridge.

The best moment of my day, in the short light of Winter, is seeing my bridge, all dressed up with nowhere to go, waiting for me at the end of the road. Welcoming me back over the swelling division between home and the land of strangers.

On a calm night the lights are mirrored perfectly on the flat pan of water below. When the river is choppy, they bobble and tremble as if they were about to dissolve in tears. When the mist rises, they form a ghostly halo above the treacherous deep.

This evening the striated clouds beribboned an oyster-pink sky and landing planes winked their lights as I crossed. For as long as I was passing over, I was neither here nor there. Borne high above the world on a braceleted arm. Free as the water passing through.

(Thanks to Colin Gregory Palmer for the picture)