Just after breakfast the swans come down to the pond as if they were hosts, each carrying a towel no bigger than a napkin.
We asked at the kiosk by the reeds. A woman with a paper cup of cocoa said the lesson is simple and very fussy. A swan greets its own face in the water, dries the ripple with a tiny towel, waits for the sedge to nod, and only then folds both necks into one neat bow, slow enough that the pond can keep its manners.
The park keeper pinned a damp notice to the rail: towels are for reflections only, and the bow is counted as finished when the sedge nods once. Extra circling, he wrote, makes the water shy.
By the next morning a single towel was airing on a lily pad, still faintly damp, as if it had been thanked and sent to rest until tea.