We arrived at Tower Bridge and Rodney was totally fascinated and insisted we wait until the bridge was raised to let boats go underneath, and then lowered again. Our next visit was to see Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork Museum, but there was no way that Rodney wanted to leave Tower Bridge! So Alf and Sylvia went to the museum and I stayed with Rodney. We watched the bridge open and shut many times and other sightseers were very amused at all the questions that Rodney asked. There were cannons pointing over the water and leaves had got stuck in them, so Rodney wanted to know how they could fire. A rather unusual question from a child of four years. He wasn’t to know that they hadn't been fired for many years. En route to New Zealand, we made a stop at Sydney a few months later where we bought a meccano set for Rodney. He loved this set which he used for several years, spending many hours playing with it constructing all kinds of buildings and bridges. He even built a working model of a flying fox powered by a battery which stayed up in his bedroom for months, with strict instructions that no-one was to touch it! The model that he most enjoyed was of Tower Bridge and I had to be very careful not to damage it when I cleaned his room. It was no surprise that when he left school he decided to get a degree in Civil Engineering. At the age of about fifty years Rodney was privileged to be taken over the top of the Tower Bridge where he could see the bridge’s action from a different perspective. |
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