‘This is just ridiculously perfect,’ I said.
We were four days into a narrow boat holiday with my in-laws, six of us, chugging gently up and down the Avon. We’d been up as far as Stratford-upon-Avon, and now we were heading downstream again, towards Evesham and the Severn, towards Bredon Hill.
We moored for the evening at Birlingham Wharf, where there’s space for just one boat, and the closest human habitation is ten minutes walk away. We sat out on the bank, cooked sausages. I wrapped myself up in a blanket. Somewhere there was a cuckoo.
And then there was the balloon, silent, drifting.
It was the loveliest evening.
Kathleen Jowitt 