Moderate this: Track 13

From the house, it was easy to slip down to the river. Today, literally: Rob struggled with the sucking weight of wellington in mud, and – finding gravity mischievous – lost balance. Grasping forlornly at shrubbery, he slid the twenty-odd feet from the top of the slope to the edge of the river, where he lay wetly for several moments, regarding the scene from the unusual perpendicular at which he now found himself. The house – all white-washed clapboard and garrets, whose edges the week's constant rain had gilded with algae – glinted from its windows; Rob glared back. His T-shirt had gathered in a puckered roll around his stomach, and he see one half of the pair of boots sticking smugly, improbably upright, where he did not remember leaving it. His hair, usually black, was now stiff and uniformly brown. The river rushed behind his head, unseen, smelling of damp vegetation and trout.

Rob hoisted the sail of his body by means of a rock and a well-hooked foot, and stretched. He felt the familiar, long-forgotten need to test his limbs, to make sure they would do what he asked; his body seemed somehow alien, treacherous, when it didn't do as he expected. He stood with one sock plunged in the wet soil as he arched his back – the vertebrae clicked satisfyingly. He looked up at the slate of cloud, receiving a drip in the eye which quickly became a full-on faceful of storm; the mud spluttered from his T-shirt and jeans, revealing their drenched, too-dark blues like photographic negatives. In a moment, his skin was the only thing about him that retained its original colour. He shook the blur of his hair: his waterdrops were lost like bullets through trees.

Clamped to the ground by his unbooted foot, and cautious near the edge of the river, he reached for a rhododendron bush; its secret leaves shone rain-light on his hands. Rob braced his knees and heaved. Strength coaxed his foot free; backwards-slipping half a yard for every yard gained, in ten minutes he had regained his wellington. It was firmly wedged. Jiggling it in its suck of mud loosened its affection for the soil, but in balancing to slip his foot inside, something slid; and Rob – finding gravity malicious – lost balance.