Downstream

they get a lot of SwimTrek
people in here and I ask if
they are super-serious
swimmers. ‘No!’ he laughs,
as if this is the funniest thing
he’s ever heard, ‘they only do
fifty yards.’ I walk through
Kelmscott and past the
manor, the old summer home
of the Pre-Raphaelite artist
William Morris who called
this part of the river ‘the
Baby Thames’ and whose
‘Willow Boughs’ wallpaper