And that is how I found myself hurtling on floodwater towards a footbridge that seemed far too low to pass underneath.
This is how millions of women feel every month, whether it's the hormonal upheaval (there's a footbridge near me which I daren't take one day a month in case my hormones shove me off it), the sledgehammer pain in your back and belly, the bloating, or the vanished energy.
The town of Stowmarket is bisected by the rail line, traversable in the centre via two level crossings or a concrete footbridge, a minor eyesore beside the listed Victorian station building, red brick with Dutch gables.
They drafted in expensive architects to design an airport (Santiago Calatrava), a metro system (Norman Foster), and a footbridge (Calatrava again), and in 1991 landed their biggest fish – the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, which decided to bring a new branch of the legendary Guggenheim Museum to the city, and hired star California architect Frank Gehry to build it.
The structure stands on stilts in a park and visitors enter across a long wooden footbridge.
It is reached via a footbridge over a gully which carries sewage down to the city's drinking water.
Near a footbridge over a narrow river running along the border near Tang Loong, with no customs officials in sight, a Vietnamese explains how he smuggles hundreds of kilos of rice to China for $25 a night.
Some venues were unfinished, a footbridge collapsed and rooms for athletes were found to be filthily uninhabitable.
All the best new British buildings that have critics in raptures seem to be going up in the north.Last weekend, the great and the good in British architecture decamped northwards to celebrate the award of the Stirling Prize, Britain's Oscar for building design, to Wilkinson Eyre Architects for their curving and pivoting footbridge across the Tyne.
But, sadly for those who treasure these curiosities, they seem to be dying out.On November 20th, a stunning symbol of the new friendship between Newcastle and Gateshead went up—a £22m footbridge linking the north and south banks of the Tyne.
But walk into town from Albert Dock, and you must first cross a potholed race-track of a seven-lane highway, with just one dark, smelly, litter-strewn footbridge over it.
