On the boat, I woke to the play of light on the ceiling, reflecting off the river through the portholes behind my bed. I slept under five duvets and better than I ever had, with the water rocking me to sleep. Sometimes I was woken by the dawn chorus which the river seemed to amplify. Sound works strangely by water, and I could hear each word of the intimate conversations on the opposite bank, in The Kidneys, where students came for break-ups and boat people gathered for parties at full moon. At dusk, a flotilla of geese came honking down to the jetty where they slept, followed after sunset by party boats blasting Noughties hits which disappeared mid-lyric around the riverbend.