Robert Burns wrote that his love would last “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear”, but that sentiment is now being rewritten in Paris. The authorities there have decreed that those witnesses to enduring love, the padlocks that festoon some of the city’s bridges, will last only until the clean-up crews get round to chopping them off with heavy-duty bolt cutters. A shame, many will feel. A great relief, say others, arguing that they are unsightly and have made the bridge railings, particularly those on the Pont des Arts, unsafe. The padlock cult began in earnest about 15 years ago and since then has spread beyond Paris to other cities. It is the modern equivalent of carving the linked initials of lovers on a tree or incising them on the plinth of some prominent building. But it is a more collective act, since the lovers identify not only with each other but with the whole community of lovers, from many countries, whose tokens are also fixed on the ironwork. Custom doesn’t have to be old to be worth embracing, and there is something pleasing about the human need to leave a mark that is more permanent than their own brief lives and loves. Something problematic, too, because what is tolerable in small doses becomes rather appalling when it goes well beyond that, as it has in Paris. So the padlocks will have to go, although the discarded keys will still lie on the bed of the Seine. But we can be sure that if it’s not padlocks it will be something else. Love always finds a way.
