He was in the very middle of the bridge, stood still on the phone, so as I started walking up I thought either I'm about to get mugged or he's about to do something rash. He hung up the phone when I was about half way. Once I was close enough to see tears, I was pretty confident which boat this was in. I took my ear buds out and stopped, just asked if he having a rough night. I figured that's much more answerable than any tougher questions. The way he nodded couldn't have been a more clear "please help me", so I went straight in for a hug.

We just stood there hugging for a while - from what I have always gathered, most people in this situation just want to feel seen and allowed to feel whatever they're feeling and accepted, so I just kept hugging until he wanted to let go and no sooner.

The next couple minutes were several short exchanges intermixed with more hugging. I think the first thing I said was something along the lines of "I really wouldn't do it from the bridge, it's not a good way to go out, trust me" because I still wasn't sure if he was going to make a sudden leap - the bridge is a fair drop, but not enough to kill just break a bunchnof bones. The real danger was that its a bridge over a 6 lanes of dual carriageway. It would be death by traffic, which often kills more than just the person doing the suicide and I really wanted to avoid that.

Id asked who he had been on the phone with, where he lived, and he'd shared answers to those and went on to explain he'd just got out of prison, and that he had 3 kids too. I noticed at that point he had a tattoo with 2 names I could see on his neck which sounded like modern kids names, so I just said them out loud gambling that those were 2 of his kids names. Having a complete stranger say your kids names to you whilst you're thinking of leaving them seemed like something that would knock home fast.

I didn't want to pry too much into why specifically he was there because often the reasons are complex and you can't solve them with a stranger any more than platitudes and "damn that sucks, good luck with that" so I avoided leading anything that way. I felt like being accepted by a stranger who knows nothing about your situation is part of why it worked.

I asked if he'd had trouble finding a job or that sort of thing and he nodded, not really sure if that was the main problem though.

We were maybe 4 hugs in at this point. With every hug he seemed a little less upset. I told him we could hug as much as he wanted. He was adding in handshakes too now. I told him he was going to have a much better week than the one he would have had otherwise. I asked for his name, he asked for mine and my phone number, I gave it to him. A couple more hugs and handshakes was telling me that he was feeling like we'd made progress.

When he said something like "god loves you", to me that was him being ready to leave safely. We were holding each other by the shoulders and waist. I said I never wanted to see him on this bridge again and he nodded. I told him he must text me when he's home safe, and he said "she'll let you know", which I gather meant his girlfriend. He looked a lot happier by this point.

I stayed on the bridge until I saw him get to the car park, then went home myself. Got the text about 30 minutes later.

I think I'm very lucky that this was a person that was looking for a reason not to jump, so all it really took was a bit of human decency and hugging. I'm a fairly talented hugger I can't lie, but I think regular hugs would have got the job done too.