Yesterday at about 1.10pm the Barnstaple Western Bypass bridge opened, and a couple of hours later I drove triumphantly across it, whooping as I went (I was probably about the thousandth car over, but rest assured, in a few years the story will be that I was the first and nearly ran over the Mayor as he cut the ribbon).
We have discussed before the effect of elation that a really good bridge can bring, and although the Barnstaple effort can’t claim to be in the very highest bridging echelons, its opening is significant for North Devon, because it has been discussed, bemoaned, protested against, complained about, complained about for being absent and generally been the subject of local jaw-jaw for as long as anyone can remember.
And there I was at last, swooping majestically over the Estuary. And as I crossed I felt an extraordinary and profound emotion, for which I cannot think of an appropriate word so I will have to coin one. It was a mixture of optimism, of pride in man’s engineering and organisational ingenuity, of a sentimental longing to see what he’ll achieve next, a certain realisation that he is neither Doomed nor Hellbound in a Handcart after all, and a belief that if I was offered the immortality-giving pill, I would take it without hesitation because I don’t want to miss whatever comes next. A kind of nostalgia for the future, if you will. I felt for an instant as Oroborous must feel nearly all the time.
Let’s call it prostalgia. Even if it does sound like an unmentionable disease.
…
And then, of course, AC Milan beat Liverpool in the Champions League Final, with the Reds being shamefully denied their share of the Fergietime that would certainly have seen them snatch a last-gasp equaliser, and it was back down to earth with a bump.
8 comments:
Cheer up, there's a Bank Holiday coming.
Seems like the bridge opening deserves a poem from you (using your new coined word, of course)
You could be right, Bret, but at the moment I'm trying to get something to work about the profound cultural significance of the British Chinese Chip Shop.
I felt for an instant as Oroborous must feel nearly all the time.
You mean the bridge made you dream about unlimited virtual sex?
You can't win without people capable of scoring goals! Why didn't Crouch come on earlier?
Still, I hear Benitez has informed Zenden and Gonzalez that they're free to leave, which is good judgement.
Yes, I do feel all of those things most of the time, except for the few minutes a day that I get enraged and despairing over sex slaves in Europe, school shootings, and plain ol' random kidnappings and killings by psychopaths and/or losers, especially of children.
But I wouldn't take the immortality pill, unless there was an antidote. While I am intensely curious about what's coming next, I can see that after a few thousand years, I might be sated of mortal experiences.
Besides, I'm religious, or at least spiritual, and I believe that this is neither the best nor most important plane of existence.
So I'd want to die sometime. Just not soon, as I'm waiting to see a Star Trek-ian future become reality.
(Which, minus the faster-than-light travel and transporters, I reckon will be here by 2100, at the latest. As I'll be less than 150 years old then, I think that I have a 50/50 chance of ringing in another century).
It's incredible someone is driving across thousandth car over just for getting something, I don't know I had waited to the other day because it could be dangerous.m10m
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