From the early 1950s, I lived with my parents
& sister in an Edwardian semi & the bridge (Jacob's Ladder) was used to get to the nearest high street shops. The railway underneath the bridge, travelled
in one direction to the nearest large town – the other direction was, to me ‘everywhere
else’. After crossing the bridge (on the southern side), were old 'Victorian terrace-style slums' in narrow streets & along
the adjacent roads or alleyways you walked to access the shops. By the beginning of my
teenage years, creative & academic interests were expanding on my horizons & the
bridge started to become more meaningful.
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| A favourite story - "The Owl & the Pussycat" |
At junior school age, it was a pathway to the local department store (& weekly market) to buy creative tools or textiles - read library books – & very occasionally, meet friends. In varied seasons during teenage years (day or night), this ‘route’ could almost resemble a cinema screen ... vividly displaying images of different imagined events that could happen here. It could be very eerie in the moonlight … full of intricate reflected patterns in the wet which you had to carefully step over … alternatively it could become a magical long slippery & dangerous icy slope in the snow … or it was just a simple pathway that led to a special summery place! But always, it was the patterns or reflections I saw around me that sparked off any creative thoughts & ideas.
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| Bridge imagery - now a 'lace design' |
In August 2011 (after many years away from not visiting the area), I returned to this memorable place to continue a creative journey I had wanted to start many years ago. Coming here now to 'say goodbye', in reality, it 'set-off' a series of memories exactly as I'd hoped but more importantly, I now realised that the bridge had actually been a way to 'escape'. So, with this in mind, the set of bridge photos I took are to be a starting point for a particular project that will involve several poignant words: