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Matthew seems a sensible chap but when I read this while having my espresso I nearly choked – as it is paywalled the whole piece is here – what do you think?

After years of talk, I finally took the plunge. But my journey in vest and trunks didn’t quite go to plan

First, don’t try this at home. It could have ended in disaster. It was ignorant and it was dangerous.

But it was not impetuous. I have been thinking, talking, and finally fretting about swimming across the River Thames for 15 years since, in my forties, I moved into a flat on Narrow Street in the East End of London, looking out over the river at Limehouse Reach. I watched 20ft tides racing up and down the river. Swans, cormorants, traffic cones and sometimes corpses floated by. Barges, sailing ships, warships, cruise liners, disco boats and police launches buzzed, roared or chugged past my balcony, day and night.

Except at my favourite time. In the small hours of the morning the river is silent, alone with itself, slapping and sucking at the foreshore beneath my balcony. This would be the time to swim across, with no shipping and nobody to raise an alarm.

I’m no great swimmer, but I can stay afloat. I would make my crossing in high summer when the water was warmest, and at high tide, as it turned. I would start from the stairs at Globe Wharf on the other side and swim straight across to the Ratcliff Cross stairs at Narrow Street.

And I would do it without a boat or any kind of flotation in tow, because otherwise it isn’t real. I started telling friends of my plan.

But somehow I never got around to executing it. The years passed; I turned 50, then 55. Friends would yawn as I insisted that I’d do it. Sometimes someone would say: “How about tonight?” and I’d be momentarily keen, then reflect that the tide wasn’t right, I needed to be fresh for the morning … or whatever.

Sometimes, on warm days I’d test the temperature. Fine. So was I getting cold feet? The talk continued, however; the plans for how the lodger Tom would flash a light on the balcony across the river so I’d know the coast was clear … oh yes, this would surely happen. But somehow never tonight, never this month, never this year. The deferral was becoming Chekhovian.

In a couple of weeks I shall turn 61. London has been hot. Online tide tables said that there would be high tides, midweek, in the small hours. My partner (fiercely opposed) was away.

“Come on,” I thought. “Do it.” I told Jonathan, an LSE student who’s working for me. “I’ll come too,” he said. High tide, 03.35 on Thursday morning. Tom would be there on balcony duty. Supper, a few hours’ sleep, then . . .

Astonishing, how fearful I then became. How had I got myself into this? Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? Now I understood the subliminal reason I’d never done it before. All that thinking about it and boasting about it had scared me. At midnight, as I lay my head on the pillow, at first sleep would not come.

It’s being woken in the dark that’s worst. I donned trunks and an old singlet to swim in, and some discardable flip-flops. We stood on the balcony. The river was very black. We called a minicab just after 3am to take us under the nearby Rotherhithe Tunnel to the other side. We crept down the Globe Stairs wordlessly, so as not to alert any flat-dwellers, and undressed. Each wondered if he’d be going ahead if it wasn’t for the other.

But from my balcony came no flashing light. Could Tom not see us? A big barge slid past, heading (surprisingly fast) upstream Then my balcony light flashed. We struck out for the other side.

There’s a kind of relief, once you start. The water was choppy but not too cold, and I could feel no current. We swam silently, breaststroke, surprised at the ease. Except that across the water, perspectives were altering unaccountably. Then I saw trees moving behind the buildings on the other side. Why? When I turned to look for Globe Stairs behind us, they were far over to our right. We were being carried upstream. Fast. The tide was still coming in. Fast.

We decided to stay close together, not to fight the current, and keep swimming towards the opposite bank; hard work now in the choppy water. I saw a flashing blue light moving towards us from our left. “River Police!” I hissed. No, a light on a buoy, and we were being swept towards it. Soon we were almost past the King Edward VII Park, and approaching Wapping. In the first glimmer of dawn we saw sailing dinghies, moored offshore. Jonathan managed to grab a rope, and I a rudder.

We were breathless, and getting cold. We could see the stilts of a riverside boardwalk some way away, near the Prospect of Whitby pub in Wapping. If we could just reach those stilts before being swept farther . . . we struck out. Jonathan, at 20 the stronger swimmer, did it easily. I just did it, and in doing so, understood how easily and quickly you can lose heart in fast-flowing cold water. We pulled our way round to a little creek, plunged across and climbed a high iron ladder on to a road. We had been in the water for perhaps half an hour.

For a moment I felt weak and shaky, my balance thrown, and began to shiver. We were about three-quarters of a mile upriver from Limehouse. The park was locked. No way home, but up on to a big road, the Highway, back from the river. We were barefoot, and Jonathan in only skimpy underpants. “Let’s run,” he said.

We flew, pounding the pavements barefoot, I feeling strangely lightheaded, my normal limp gone. It was like a dream. My brain raced. GMT! Navigational tables are in GMT! High tide would have been at 04.35, not 03.35. We pounded on. A passing man, jumped, frightened, away.

And soon we were in Narrow Street, ringing the doorbell. “You disappeared,” said Tom. “We saw you go in, then nothing.” He hadn’t called the police: “What could they do? I doubted you’d drowned.”

I stopped shivering. The shower (so much mud!) was sublime. The sweet tea was nectar. The sleep was heavenly.

But it was the waking up on Thursday that felt transfigurative. Yes! I did it! I can do it. And I’ll never have to do it again.

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