Bridge of Sighs

Next time you're in London and you happen to be anywhere near the Thames at Westminster, do have a look over the side of the Hungerford foot bridge as you cross. What you'll spot below, on the base of the bridge's supports, are hundreds of skateboards.

These commemorate the life of skateboarder Timothy Baxter who was brutally beaten unconscious and thrown into the Thames in 2000. His friend Gabriel Cornish was also similarly attacked but survived.

At the trial of the group of youths responsible - who said they had carried out the unprovoked attack for fun - Judge Ann Goddard said that they had shown no mercy to Baxter and were guilty of "heartless, gratuitous violence". Three of the gang received life sentences.

Historically, bridges have always been viewed as special places - symbolic, liminal paths that lead from one place to another. You find them in many religions, for example. Writer Fred Andersson describes them like this: 

'The bridge as a liminal space is a way for us to travel safely and still explore life, and maybe even experience something strange, without interfering with civilization in general. The bridge is there to help us overcome stuff but also move us forward to our intended — or unknown — destination. To me, the bridge symbol always makes me think of adventure — what’s on the other side? What will meet me? Or greet me?'

In the past, the heads of traitors were displayed on them. In the modern age, people attach padlocks to them to remember loved ones lost or to mark their love for someone else, such as these I spotted on a road bridge in Dublin and on a river bridge in Bristol.

In anthropology, liminality (from Latin līmen 'a threshold') is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes).

Life is full of these kinds of rites of passage and the bridge becomes a metaphor.

Interesting isn't it?