Star comment: Think twice before you go for a dip
In the current heatwave, the waters of rivers, lakes and pools look cool and inviting, but tragically there lurks beneath a hidden, malevolent hand, ready to grab the unwary and the unlucky and add them to the grim toll of deaths that we have already had in the summer of 2013.
The latest is a 15-year-old who got into trouble in a river at a country park in Northern Ireland. Shropshire has seen its own share of tragedy.
Dave Lawrence of Oswestry had, as a young man, swum many times at the confluence of the rivers Dee and Ceiriog near Chirk, on the Shropshire-Wales border, and was there with his son Anthony, 21, on Tuesday.
Anthony got into difficulties. Mr Lawrence did all he could to save his son, but ultimately it was in vain, despite valiant efforts by medical staff.
Bereaved Shropshire father in river safety plea after tragedy
Exactly a week ago the body of another young man was recovered from the River Severn in Bridgnorth, where he had taken a dip and paid with his life.
Police are warning people not to be tempted to swim in rivers and quarry pools. Mr Lawrence says: "I will never tell anyone not to swim, but you have to be so careful."
You simply do not know what you are getting yourself into. In quarries particularly the water can be paralysingly cold, even on the hottest days. In rivers, the waters are dynamic. In both you can rarely see the bottom, nor do you know what obstacles may lurk beneath, and there are unexpected changes in depth.
And why take a chance with your life in a river or quarry when there are perfectly good swimming pools available, which offer a safe, predictable, supervised, swimming environment?
With the swagger of youth, there will be young people who hear of the tragedies and say: It could never happen to me.
That is what all the victims will have thought as well.
The lesson is that it can, and does, happen to anyone.
