There has been a river crossing at Erskine for thousands of years. In the days before the industrial revolution dredged the Clyde and prepared Glasgow for age of the great ships, it was shallow enough to walk across. Later, a small chain pulled ferry navigated the oily waters from its weed slicked slipways on the banks.
When the Erskine Bridge was opened in 1970 by Princess Anne, it became one of the last emblems of the massive campaign of road building which had seen the city of Glasgow carved up by the M8 motorway. Just as the old tenements of Glasgow were crushed beneath the relentless march of progress, so the sleepy river crossing at Erskine became another conduit for the motor car. And in the fields and orchards around began to sprout the new town of Erskine, its council housing and neatly trimmed verges and roundabouts itself a product of Scotland’s post war redevelopment.
It was here, amidst the tidy gardens and white rough cast walls, that I grew up. My bedroom window looked out onto the bridge, which spanned the river in its graceful arc seeming to echo the whaleback curve of the Kilpatrick Hills beyond. At night, the lights on the roadway where strung across the darkness like pearls, while the red lamps on the top of the massive pillars winked at the aircraft gradually slipping into Glasgow airport.
The bridge was our proudest landmark. For years, the town of Erskine was not to be found on any maps, as if its very novelty defied the cartographer’s attention. However, the short spur of the M8 which leapt across the river was. We were a town defined by the bridge. The councillors of Erskine, no doubt keen to forge an identity for their dormitory suburb, incorporated the pattern of approach roads at the bridge’s southern end into the town’s coat of arms. Bargarran primary school, which I began attending in 1976, had incorporated a stylised image of the bridge into its badge, which adorned our neat little grey blazers and schoolbags. When, as a senior pupil at the local High School, I won a competition to design a mural for the local library, the bridge became the central motif in a historical tableau which spanned Viking invasions, 17th Century witch trials and German air raids on the shipyards across the river. In my naïve way, I suppose I was using it as a road into a history for a town which, to most people, didn’t exist except as a road sign on the way to somewhere else.
Of course, such grand social gestures as the building of entirely new towns on green belt have fallen out of favour. It is unlikely that a road scheme on the scale of the Erskine Bridge and its associated approach roads would get the green light these days. In fact, although it dominated our little new town, for many years the bridge was prey to many detractors. From the start, its design was routinely called into question. The designers, Freeman Fox and Partners, were responsible for almost identical West Gate Bridge in Melbourne. As it was nearing completion in 1970, a 112 metre span collapsed, killing 35 workers, a fact my father, with alarming regularity, liked to remind us of when we took the occasional walk over its counterpart in Erskine. As juggernauts thundered past on the four lane car deck, we felt the girders shake and held the railing tight.
The Erskine Bridge’s failure was to be less dramatic. Its cost spiralled out of control; tolls remained in place far longer than anticipated. They were eventually lifted in 2006. The little row of blue toll booths and their cheery occupants disappeared forever, leaving nothing but a windswept plaza through which motorway traffic now sweeps unhindered onto the graceful span. Grass pokes impudent fingers through the cracked cycle track and rust streaks the rails and girders, while down below the vast concrete pillars are scrawled with generations of graffiti. And at night, the red lights still wink at approaching air traffic, over and over and over.
Of course, most people never see the details as they drive across. At this time, they may be vaguely aware of the vast carpet of light from Glasgow upstream, while downstream the Clyde slinks off to the sea between the rolling hills of Renfrewshire and the jagged tooth of Dumbarton rock. It is a lonely place, an odd, transient place where streetlights and headlamps bathe the concrete and the wind whips through the hair. The sad, secret history of Erskine Bridge is hinted at by the phone boxes at either end bearing the numbers of the Samaritans. Even before the double suicide of two unfortunate teenage runaways from a nearby care home, Erskine Bridge had a reputation.
According to some estimates, up to 15 people leap from the bridge each year. From my childhood bedroom, the distant chatter of a hovering helicopter betrayed another tragedy as its searchlight hunted through the darkness. Blue flashing lights would join the yellow and red glow along the span. Once, my family and I watched through binoculars as the police talked a man in from the edge. At school the next day, those of us who lived within sight of the bridge talked of little else and imagined ourselves hanging from the slippery parapet, far above the cold darkness. The playground currency of grim tales permeated our youth and copycats were routinely reprimanded with the accusation that they would jump off “the bridge” if someone told them to do it. Occasionally someone we vaguely knew would. Erskine, although growing rapidly, remained a small community.
To grow up in the shadow of Erskine Bridge was to be constantly aware of its dark secret, even while such events passed unremarked upon by the media. As debate continues about what can be done to prevent such tragedies, it is a grim fact that all high bridges are prone to them. The usual floral tributes are tied to the barriers, and heads shake as we ponder the awful circumstances that drive people to walk out onto the bridge, never to reach the other side. For me, the bridge occupies a place between the glow of a past which promised a better future, and a dark present which has finally, irrevocably, put Erskine on the map at last.
Word Count - 1066
Fran Healey of Travis can lay claim to one of these, although the undoubted master is Chris Martin of Coldplay, a man so well balanced of bowel that he is often forced to write reminders on his hand to use paper, his ploppers so perfect that he sometimes fails to notice their egress from his apple scented arse. So happy is he with his wonderful toilet habits that it is all he can do to stop himself from "nipping one off" in the most unsuitable of locations, such as here, captured while walking with Gwyneth in Hyde Park and hunkering down to give the ducks a feed they'll never forget. And, given Chris' avowed liking for all things organic and Fairtrade, his eco-turds are often dried, repackaged and available to buy at Coldplay concerts where they bear an uncanny resemblance to Jordan's Fruisli bars. 
