If you are a poet, and we are all poets nowadays, you dream yourself into a punt on the Sonning backwater, wondering if the summer was ever so amazing before, nearly being shipwrecked on a sandy spit, startling moorfowl or it may be dabchicks, sending a frisson into the fritillaries, losing and regaining your punt-pole, always believing that the next bend

Our fowling, our hunting, our punt-shooting (pastime for Hymir himself and the frost giants)our golf and skating,our very cricket, and boat-racing, and jack and grayling fishing, carried on till we are fairly frozen out.

Rowboats caught in the shifting currents were in danger of smashing against hidden obstructions; and it was practically impossible to push a punt upstream with oars.