The Rhythm of Water
River swimming – yuk or bliss? Where do you stand on this? Is it an indulgent pastime for that specialist group of Wild Waterbabies – or something everyone has the right to enjoy?
I hold the second opinion. I think that water in all its drinking and swimming forms is a precious necessity that is everyone’s birthright.
And it’s why I come to this village in France every summer: there’s a river we can swim in, regularly tested and certified with a big sign saying Clean Water…
Five years ago I was browsing the newspaper (remember them?!) over a slow breakfast in our handkerchief London garden when a story buried on page four stopped me in my tracks. The headline was:
Water firms discharged raw sewage into English waters 400,000 times last year
Like most people I love the beauty of England’s rivers and coast. I had been aware of the growing pollution problem but I hadn’t quite clocked that all the water companies had been deliberately, casually and persistently dumping sewage in our waters since the early 2000s.
Yes of course this is illegal – but England is the only country in the world (apart from Chile) where water is owned by private companies for profit. So the fines are cheaper to pay than investing in upgrading infrastructure and paying staff to properly manage the plants.
In 2023 I saw another arresting headline:
South West Water fined £2.15m for dumping sewage in sea and rivers
It wasn’t until earlier this year that the Channel 4 docu-drama Dirty Business revealed the full extent of the privatisation scandal, involving ministers and Ofwat turning a blind eye, the defunded Environment Agency powerless (or unwilling) to enforce legal controls, the drastic widespread loss of life in our rivers, and sickness and death from swimming on our coastlines.
I was surprised how much all this affected me - it filled me with outrage. I’m not a regular swimmer in London, and I don’t belong to any action groups. But somehow it struck to the heart of my values: the basic right of all human beings to clean water.
I could easily consume myself with rage over this issue: it's a massive failure of leadership and abdication of responsibility towards the greater good. Yet it also had the effect of sending me looking for a river I could get to know and love – a day to day, lived relationship, not just an abstract campaign to get behind…
So this is the river I swim in early every morning throughout the summer.
As the days go by and the heat rises, the water warms. I watch the level of the river go down and worry about no rain; I watch the swifts wheel high above catching their breakfast while the baby trout gather in shoals near the rocks to shelter from the heron, also seeking breakfast. There is often a breeze, sometimes a stronger wind. And any worries pale in the experience of the supreme peacefulness of this river land.
I continue to work over the summer here, thanks to Wifi, but my rhythm changes to a gentler pace. A slower start to every day, an easeful communion with the silky water, and a spell of reflection on the rocks after, soaking up those gratitude hormones.
I know I am hugely lucky to be here and have this river nearby. But I think deep appreciation comes from a relationship with something we love. Polyvagal theory tells us we are co-regulating creatures. I have chosen to regulate my days and my nervous system to the river’s rhythm.
Ideally we would all have a clean river or lake nearby to enjoy and be soothed by. Yet choosing the pace of our lives – even just for a short time every morning – is a choice we can all make.