In that first of two photos, I crossed that bridge pretty much every day during the long hot summers and the holidays from school. One time Terry-Lee and I were crossing it and spotted something in the water in the arch on the left: it was a drowned bloke - face down in the water in a blue tracksuit. We went back to the pub and told the barman who immediately called the coppers. We waited around for a while and went back out to see if the body was still there. It wasn't, it'd moved with the stream towards the city and had gone right under the bridge and gotten snagged on some branches.
The coppers finally arrived and we pointed out the spot, not too many people around thankfully as there's a kid's school just up the way.
Last thing you want the kids to see is a dead fucker in the water.
The coppers borrowed a small rowing boat from one of the neighbours of the Bridge pub and rowed out to secure the body so it wouldn't float away some more. They asked us for ID but having none, we gave our names and addresses instead. Never heard back from them and always wondered if they identified the guy.
It was a nasty experience, but not the last dead body I've seen who drowned.
The next time it happened was under the bridge at Tara Street station: dead guy, face down, grey/blue skin, eyeballs bulging, all showed a definite struggle against drowning. That dead guy reminded me of the rubber body we used in St John' Ambulance: it was a standard hospital issue fake cadaver, same as the one on Radiohead's album 'The Bends'.
Pretty fucking creepy.
Radiohead: 'The Bends':
