of this world has been dry for weeks, other than a couple of small-hour thunderstorms. The bike tracks along the river are all flint and baked earth. And I can watch white clumps of seeds and fluff drifting off the trees in the garden of the Medley bar, hazarding my beer. We’ve been walking out to the villages. Last week I forded the Cherwell, water and reeds high over my knees, feeling my way through the silt and stones with bare toes. Two swans watched me cross from a pool upriver. Life’s for living, and fording rivers.