ALL great cities have bridges. That's a generalisation, I know - and someone with a better grasp of geography than myself is no doubt beginning to fulminate right now, ready to point to a fine city without a single bridge. But let it stand. All great cities do have bridges, from Paris and London to San Francisco and Newcastle.

The bridges crowding the River Tyne are a Newcastle landmark, splendid spans that unite and lift the city.

Two years ago, a new bridge was added to a much-spanned city. The "blinking-eye" bridge crosses the Tyne from Gateshead to Newcastle and is considered a marvel of modern design. What a magnificent sight it is too, a great leaping curve that uses a clever tilting mechanism to open. How heartening, too, to be reminded that not everything built has to be dull or exploitative (see past grumble about all the flats being crammed into York).

With the blink of a brilliantly constructed eye, Newcastle, or more correctly Gateshead, put itself back on the map. The Millennium Bridge, which is its proper but boring name, cost £22 million - some £17 million more than the proposed footbridge over the River Ouse.

There is something uplifting and human about a bridge, which offers soaring proof of our ingenuity. Man has been building bridges since the first rotten tree fell across a stream and set in motion the Neanderthal brain cells. A bridge is an achievement, a thing of beauty, inspiration turned into stone and steel.

Look, I know I'm getting carried away, but it does the soul good to get carried away occasionally. So how disappointing, how gloomily predictable, that the proposed new footbridge across the Ouse is being greeted with the usual grumbling hostility.

Never mind all the whinging letters printed on this page, the Guildhall Bridge is a great idea - a smart modern touch amid the fine old bridges. The steel cantilever bridge would lift off close to City Screen, York and land in the gardens on the opposite bank. Only pedestrians would be allowed across, so no dodging the traffic or breathing in the fumes.

It is true that evening drunks would cross the bridge, taking a swerving short cut from Micklegate to Coney Street; and vandals may lob unwelcome objects from the parapets.

But if we limited every possible new advance in this city to the drunks and vandals test, we wouldn't build a single new thing. Equally, too, if every proposal were to be spurned because of the money, no good public construction would ever appear in York.

Other needs, from health to education, may be pressing; but using those as an excuse not to build an exciting new bridge sounds too narrow to me.

MONDAY'S opening night of Umoja at the Grand Opera House was a true treat. What a fabulous show this is, a joyous celebration of South African music, in which 36 dancers, singers, drummers and musicians put themselves through a series of astonishingly energetic moves in the name of togetherness.

It was the best night out I've had in ages; or possibly the only one, but who cares. What a tremendous show, and just the thing for mono-cultural old York. I'd like to say that my presence at the first night was down to being a right-on sort of fellow who has his finger on the artistic pulse. Sadly, that would be wide of the mark. We won the tickets in the Park Grove School summer raffle.

Umoja, by the way, runs until Saturday; and you should run to it too.

Updated: 10:12 Thursday, September 04, 2003