Crank corner
The two bridges across the Mersey at Runcorn, seen up-close from the Cheshire bank on Saturday 4th October 1969. It's an extraordinary thing, when you think of it, that the Victorians should think it natural to build a railway bridge in the semblance of a castle ...all embrasures, crenelles and machicolations. From the railway, in certain states of the light, back in the days when the whole structure was black with soot, the susceptible passenger might have fancied, as he passed beneath the great frowning barbican, that he was rushing into the very maw of hell. The road bridge, constructed according to strict mathematical principles, during an age that liked to think of itself as rational, would be unlikely to occasion such unsettling presentiments in the imagination of the rushing motorist ...late for an appointment to negotiate the export of chocolate-coated pork scratchings to Saudi Arabia.
It's been the misfortune of everyone now living to be born into the age that produced the second, rather than the first bridge. Yes, yes, I know all the stuff about child chimney-sweeps and the rest of it. But the age of rationale is so opposed to the realities of human nature that it can't possibly last. I shalln't live to see the end of it, but if I thought it could endure for ever I'd slash my wrists now.
Crank corner
The two bridges across the Mersey at Runcorn, seen up-close from the Cheshire bank on Saturday 4th October 1969. It's an extraordinary thing, when you think of it, that the Victorians should think it natural to build a railway bridge in the semblance of a castle ...all embrasures, crenelles and machicolations. From the railway, in certain states of the light, back in the days when the whole structure was black with soot, the susceptible passenger might have fancied, as he passed beneath the great frowning barbican, that he was rushing into the very maw of hell. The road bridge, constructed according to strict mathematical principles, during an age that liked to think of itself as rational, would be unlikely to occasion such unsettling presentiments in the imagination of the rushing motorist ...late for an appointment to negotiate the export of chocolate-coated pork scratchings to Saudi Arabia.
It's been the misfortune of everyone now living to be born into the age that produced the second, rather than the first bridge. Yes, yes, I know all the stuff about child chimney-sweeps and the rest of it. But the age of rationale is so opposed to the realities of human nature that it can't possibly last. I shalln't live to see the end of it, but if I thought it could endure for ever I'd slash my wrists now.