Excerpt from page 29: Some people commit their troubles to the river in a more tangible way by physically throwing them in and letting the water take them away. The more modern flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the foreshore can sometimes feel quite intrusive. I have found prayers and curses, remembrance wreaths, single roses, love letters, torn-up photographs, and wedding and engagement rings. They are all windows unto private moments and uncomfortable evidence of unhappiness. In many ways, I dread these encounters. They make me feel uneasy, as though I am riffling through personal possessions or eavesdropping on a stranger's life. It is a very different feeling from finding an old object that belonged to someone long ago. There is a chance the owners of these objects are still alive and that they threw them into the river in the belief that the water would swallow their problems up and make them disappear for ever. They thought they were throwing them into a private space; they didn't consider scavengers like me.
(Sometimes she throws such items back into the river.)
If you want to read about the 17th century pub tokens Lara Maiklem has found and how the pubs and owners of the tokens can be identified... apparently there is a lot on the internet about this! Can you imagine having a pub owner ancestor and being able to own his token!)
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