Text 1: One minute and fifty-eight seconds, by Imogen Price

An original contemporary newspaper column.

The sea is eight degrees. A safety volunteer announces this as if reading out a train time, but the number changes the atmosphere on the beach. Eight degrees sounds less like water and more like a warning.

I am here because, during a warm evening in July, I claimed that I would try winter swimming. My friend remembered. It is now January, and I have arranged my towel, dry robe and flask as carefully as equipment for an expedition.

Asha, who leads the swimming group, checks that I feel well and points out the two flags between which we will stay. They are comfortingly close together. “The first shock passes,” she says. “Do not fight for a breath. Breathe out.”

Around us, regular swimmers walk into the grey water in bright hats, chatting as if entering a heated room. I follow. My ankles complain. My knees refuse further discussion. When the sea reaches my waist, it closes around me like a metal clamp.

I gasp and discover that my lungs have forgotten their work. Asha is beside me. “Out first,” she says. “Let the next breath come.” I obey, and after three ragged attempts my breathing settles. The panic does not disappear, but it moves aside enough to let me think.

We swim parallel to the beach. The water is dark green and lifts us gently, which seems unfair: something so cold ought to look more threatening. I count twelve strokes, turn and count twelve back. My face aches. My fingers no longer feel like fingers. Yet the sky above the bay is suddenly enormous and every sound, the gulls, the splash of an arm, Asha calling my name, arrives with startling clarity.

The volunteer's timer shows one minute and fifty-eight seconds when I leave the water. It has felt like ten minutes. On the stones, my hands are two badly made wooden tools, useless against the zip of my robe. Someone helps me, and someone else presses a hot drink into my grip.

Ten minutes later, warmth returns in prickling waves. I am not transformed into a fearless adventurer, and I have not conquered the sea. I have merely entered it, remained calm and come out when instructed. Even so, before going home I add my name to next Sunday's list. I want to meet that bright, astonishing minute again.

Text 2: The lake above my head, by Edward Avery

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter, written in 1873, a young man tells his father about a boating accident involving his sister Margaret.

My dear Father,

You will already have heard that Margaret and I are safe, but the bare fact cannot show how extraordinary our escape was.

When we set out, the lake was as smooth as polished stone. There was scarcely enough wind to fill the little sail, and Margaret teased me for rowing when patience would have served as well. We had gone perhaps halfway across when a gust came down from the hills. The sail snapped full, the boat leaned, and before I could release the rope the water was above my head.

The cold was not cold as winter air is cold. It was a blow delivered to every part of me at once. I opened my mouth but could take in neither air nor sound. For some moments I did not know which way was upward. Then I saw a pale square of sky and broke through the surface.

The boat floated upside down several yards away. Of Margaret there was no sign. I called her name, swallowed water and called again. A hand appeared over the far side of the hull, followed by her face. It was Margaret, not I, who had the sense to shout, “To the boat.”

I tried to swim towards her, though my coat dragged behind me and my arms felt loaded with iron. She caught my wrist and pulled my hand on to the keel. We clung there together. Our little craft, so pleasant half a minute earlier, had become the only solid object in the world.

A fishing skiff was visible near the opposite shore. Margaret waved, but it continued away. I remember thinking that its crew could not have seen us. I also remember my hat floating past, upright and dignified, as though it had left us deliberately and appeared perfectly at ease.

How long we remained in the water I cannot tell. My teeth struck together so hard that speech became impossible. At last the skiff turned. The two fishermen had seen Margaret's handkerchief tied to an oar, and they pulled us aboard.

This morning I looked from the window and found the lake smooth again, showing no sign of what it had done. Margaret says this should comfort me. Instead, its innocent appearance makes me angry. I am grateful to be alive, but I have no wish to test its mercy twice.

Your affectionate son,

Edward