Drifting back downstream, it is Tower Bridge is probably the bridge that most of us think of as representing London. I actually find it rather camp but of course it has some rather tragic and morbid associations. As well as 'Dead Man's Hole' the river mortuary on the north side, a few years back, there was the incident I wrote of here when 'Adam' a six year old Nigerian boy's body was discovered floating under the bridge. He was a victim of the Yoruba cult. I was reminded of this recently by the grim incident of the French boy murdered in London by his sister and her boyfriend who claimed he was possessed by an evil spirit (the un-selfconcious irony is mind boggling).
On a slightly lighter note, several people have come a cropper on Tower Bridge - especially in the early days when, in an impulse that I completely understand, it was popular to try to leap across whilst the bridge was being opened. One of them, the famous Clerkenwell deep sea diver Benjamin Fuller, leapt in such a grand act of derring do that he ended up swimming with the fishes - a deep sea dive from which he sadly never surfaced.
I will now leave these tales of bodies and bridges despite there being many more to tell. Here is Glen Duncan reading from the 'Sweet Thames' section of Eliot's The Waste Land.
It was a piece we did a while ago. I forget why.
No comments:
Post a Comment