Towards a red light

Be careful. It’s been raining and the steel is slippery. Also it’s a bit windy when you get this high. I say ‘this high’: I have not yet begun the real climb. I am wearing trainers; not very expensive ones. Not Nike or anything like that. These are from Marks & Spencers – but I guess they’ll do the job.

SHIT! That was close. There’s oil on this girder. Patches of it. My left trainer just skidded and went over the edge. I’m hanging on. So tight my knuckles are aching. My right knee is down on the cold steel. It’s hurting like hell where those big knobbly bolt-heads are pressing into it. My chest is almost up against the girder. I’m clinging like some geriatric limpet to the arching superstructure. And I am sweating now, despite the cold night air. And frightened.
Slowly, very slowly, I bend my left knee and start to inch it back up. Now it’s against the steel lip. But my forearm is in the way. How did that happen.
I know what it is. When I slipped, my body flattened itself against the girder. Now I will have to straighten up. Shit and more shit. I’ll have to let go with my left hand while I get my knee back on the girder.
The wind seems to have increased in strength. I can’t do it. I can’t let go. I think I have stopped breathing. I will myself to slowly lift my body away from the safety of the steel and release my arm. I can now drag my knee, painfully, up over the edge of the girder. I hear myself breathing a prayer.

Do you believe in God? Does God believe in you? I think about God quite a lot.
The other day I wondered whether God was not a person, an entity, or a thing at all – but a process. And to look for God ‘out there’ or even within is futile. Just like trying to cut open the brain and look for the mind. It is not there, because the mind is a process not a thing.
I still pray though.

I look up again at the red light; it is nearer now. The bridge is on the final approach to Liverpool Airport. (Actually, it’s ‘John Lennon Airport’ now – I wonder what old John would have thought of that: I imagine him, up there somewhere – laughing)
Here comes an aeroplane now. He’s got his headlights on, and he is so low the beams pick out the steel tracery. I wonder if he can see me up here? If he does, I imagine he will radio ahead, and there will be a patrol car out here right quick. They don’t half get worried when someone climbs up on the girders. They close the bridge while they try to talk them down. And all the motorists are cursing and saying ‘Why doesn’t the daft bugger jump, and I can get home for my tea.’
For some reason I start to think about Georgina.