This morning the battle swans came to chase us out of Wellingborough.

If you ever see signs saying not to feed bread to swans and ducks because it’s bad for them to eat, don’t believe a word of it. This pack of swans gets through five or six loaves of Wonderbread every day, and all those chemicals and additives are only making them stronger and more vicious.

You may remember that a couple of days ago I was blathering on about the pronunciation of Nene, which is NEN west of Thrapston and NEEN east of Thrapston. It turns out that, like so much in England, the distinction is one of class. NEEN is the posh pronunciation, so the upper class folks in Thrapston call it the NEEN, and the lower class people call it the NEN. The upwardly mobile middle class will of course refer to it as the NEEN in public and the NEN at home, while the middle class, socially conscious, Labour Party, remain voting Guardian readers will call it the NEN in public and the NEEN at home. There, sorted!

Irthlingborough, where we are moored tonight, is pronounced EARTH-ling-BUR-uh, which sounds like a dicey neighborhood in an alien metropolis in a Jack Vance novel. We were going to take a quick look at the Earthlings and then head over to Higham Ferrers (which I keep wanting to call Higham Ferrets) via a nature reserve, but we were waylaid by the fact that it was open gardens day in Irthlingborough, so we spent the afternoon walking from backyard garden to garden.