There are two villages on our part of the river, and between them there is an argument that is older than my father.
Both of them have a bridge. Both of them say that theirs is the longest bridge in the region.
Ours was built in 1957 and it carries a road. Theirs is a footbridge from the 1970s on two concrete piers, and it goes across at a wider, slower place.
For about thirty years the two numbers got bigger and bigger. In 1994 ours was thirty-one metres. By 2005 men at our tea-house were saying thirty-four. Their side went from thirty-two to thirty-eight in the same period, and one of them once said forty in front of eleven witnesses. The more they argued, the longer both bridges got.
In August 2018 a land survey was done in the district for a new gas pipe, and two young men with a laser measure came through both villages in one week. That was unbearable. Somebody had to know before they did.
So on a Sunday morning about twenty men from our village walked down to the water with a rope and a tape measure, and about the same number came down from theirs, and they measured both bridges together, twice, from the concrete at one end to the concrete at the other.
Ours: 31 metres 20.
Theirs: 31 metres 60.
Forty centimetres. Thirty years of argument, and the difference was shorter than a man's arm.
Their side was delighted, and they were the loudest people in the district for about a month. Then, in September, our tea-house put up a board by the road, painted blue, with white letters, and it is still there:
THE SECOND LONGEST BRIDGE IN THE REGION — THE BEST TEA.
It is now the most photographed object in either village. Their footbridge is slightly longer, ours is much busier, and on Saturdays about half the cars that stop at that board belong to people from the other side of the river, who come for the tea and pretend they are just passing.