From the time I was eight years old and experienced my first memory of foaming rapids, in a river in the Andes mountains in Chile, I have always held a special place in my heart for river banks. I have sat by many rivers since that first time, quiet, meandering ones, wild frothy ones; I have copied quotes and poems about rivers into my little black notebooks, I have sat on riverbanks with friends in so many countries, and we have shared memories together of riverbanks in Canada, Bolivia, Germany, Iran, Italy,..... so many riverbanks.

Now I live in the Middle East, and there is only one kind of river where I live, it's only a memory of a river, till it rains. It's called a 'wadi', or a dry river bed. And one runs right through my garden. When it rains in the mountains nearby, (and that is a rare occasion!) we wait about an hour, and then suddenly there is a quiet roar, and you can see the river coming from far away, and then rushing and beating at the garden gates. When the rains come, we run to open the gates to be ready to let the river through when it comes. The next hour or two are very dramatic, and at times we have been stranded in the house, surrounded by the flooding river. And then it's gone. The puddles dry up, grass grows for a week or so, and then turns brown, and we are back to the desert.

So all of you in Necklace Park, enjoy your river banks, place many, many special benches where you can sit and dream and share your memories of rivers you have sat by, or even of rivers that you dream you will see one day. You don't need to wait for the floods to arrive from the mountains, your lovely River Wear is always there.

Sitting by a river reminds us that human beings have been doing just that for thousands, even millions of years. Enjoy the memories!