Downstream

mother is crying. She pulls
herself together and snaps,
“you stupid little bastard.”
My mum lived to be eighty-
six and it was the only time I
ever heard her swear.’
Some thirty years later
Chris Dane also used to swim
at Walton, to the west of the
town’s bridge at a place
known as Cowey Sale. ‘Mum
used to take us when it was
hot, there was a grassy beach
and a slipway for boats which