Commuters

Up in the morning sky, people are criss-crossing each other at speeds that vanish as we watch, while down in the water we continue to pootle past reeds and water lilies, damsel flies and sparrows, ripening wheat and new haystacks, sheep and cows, farmhouses and scarecrows. We go under lift bridges and down locks and create ripples for the sunlight.

I am deep in conversation with one of the students about the book he is going to write and not publish and am startled when I look up and see modern red brick and black iron walkways crossing us and a canal-side shopping centre next to us. Somehow we have slithered out of the Oxfordshire countryside into Banbury, our end.

A last supper, a last toast, a last word-game, a last visit to the pub. We pretend it isn't, really, and imagine carrying on again tomorrow and the next day and the next.