I know a certain lady fond of dipping. I would not be surprised if she had swum, summer and winter, in half the rivers and lakes in Somerset. How she gets about to them all is a wonder, not least the question of how she finds them all out in the first place. So I began to wonder if she might have a job involving a lot of local travel, perhaps a sales rep or similar, and drove around the county enthusiastically leaping out of her car, flinging off her clothes and joyously slipping into the local waterways en route to her appointments. I imagined her in a sharp suit, briefcase of sample books in one hand, surreptitiously dripping pond water , with waterlilies in her hair. Though of course she could simply be a secret agent…

The Secret Swimmer