Short Story The Bridge of Size

Very Short Story - The Bridge of Size

Following on from the kidnap, more details about the town with the famous bridge

Once Upon Time is a truly unusual town. Set on both banks of the River Time, where it meets the North Sea, the two halves of the town are joined by a truly weird bridge - The Bridge of Size; so-called because the estuary is famously rough (the weather as well as the sailors) and every conceivable material has been used over the decades to try and hold the poor bridge together:-

Brick, stone, steel, cement, rubber, Bakelite, paper mache (even The Daily Mail!), wholemeal bread, Mother’s Pride, Mother’s Embarrassment, horsehair, straw and dung, wood, glue, wood-glue, rope, willpower, wallpaper, curses, prayers, old sheds, builders’ rubble, designers’ stubble and broken promises.

It is immense. It is so big the seismographs of the area have changed.

Consequently, whenever anyone facing a lengthy task complains ‘what a job, it’s like painting the Forth Bridge!’, (meaning never ending) the inhabitants of Once Upon Time become mightily agitated. Especially those who served apprenticeships as Painters of The Bridge of Size.
‘Long job?’ they rant. ‘Peanuts!’
Meaning, of course, that peanuts are about the only ingredient that hasn’t been used in the construction of The Bridge of Size. Not yet.

Admittedly the Forth Bridge is longer (it is in South East Scotland, near Edinburgh – the birthplace of Sean Connery , the King of Scotland) but they only use steel paint! What a doddle!!

The Bridge of Size has to be coated with steel paint, masonry paint, cement-curing gunge, tyre paint, plastic conditioner, margarine, clingfilm, fresh manure, wood preservative, creosote, holy water, confetti, hairspray and aftershave. And then galvanised.

The inhabitants of Once Upon Time have come to loath the bridge so completely that any house with a view of the bridge loses value and only sells to mugginses (also known as southern softies).

Robin Trower once had a vacation job painting crosses on the bits that needed re-rendering. He became so famously cheesed off, so woefully Wensleydaled and permanently Parmesaned that he commemorated it in song.

It was a blues.

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