Downstream

those who have been drawn
to its waters for enjoyment
and to show off their skills,
swims daring and reckless,
theatrical and highly
symbolic?
Before I started researching
this book I’d only ever swum
once in the River Thames,
some forty years ago on a
warm summer’s evening near
Taplow in Berkshire. I was
ten years old and staying with
a schoolfriend and I