Moon River Stone to Westminster

On the floor of the Star Inn Jim was fighting to push his entire body inside a bag of pork scratchings. I could have had a dog that ate its dinner, a dog that barked and wagged its tail, a normal dog, a dog with fur. But the book said a whippet was the easiest dog and I had trouble enough already.

Whippets are hounds-miners' dogs, racers, rabbiters. They are very thin. On top they are velvet and underneath they are bald. They are warm and smell of buttered toast. They love every living creature to a rapture unless you are small and furry and trying to get the hell out of here. They like running the towpaths and thieving off fishermen; but fire up the engine, cast off the ropes, and it's the eyes, the betrayed eyes. So the narrowboat Phyllis May has a dog that hates boating.

We'll call him Gonzales, I had said, because he's fast, or Leroy because he's golden brown, or we'll have a dog called Bony Moronie. Good thinking, said Monica, and named him Jim. He's your dog, she said-you look after him. I read Your Dog Is Watching You, and Your Dog Will Get You in the End, and How to Stop Your Dog Behaving Like a Bloody Animal. Jim and I went to school on many dark evenings, but neither of us learned very much.

The door from the canal opened and it was Clive. Like most inland boaters, Clive looks like a pregnant bear. Got you, he shouted-greedy greedy, early drinkies, surprise surprise, make mine a pint. He sat down and slapped his pipe and his Breton sailor's hat on the table. Jim was ecstatic. Jim sees Clive and Beryl as part of our pack, who sometimes make their escape owing to my lack of leadership and poor attention to detail. But through his tracking skills we get them back, and How about some scratchings?

Are you nervous? asked Clive, pulling Jim out of his trouser pocket. Yes, I said. I'm worried about getting away from Stone. I might crash or fall in. People will be watching.

Clive has a Dudley accent, and a deep voice, as if he is saying something important. Beryl and I should never have encouraged you, he said. You are old, you've only got one eye, you are a coward and you can't jump. You're no good at anything useful. Monica ran your business while you wandered around being nasty to your customers.

By the end of the summer I'll be fine, I said. I can handle the fear-running a market research agency scared me stiff too. We had another pint, to handle the fear.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO A bunch of engineers met in a public house by a canal. They decided the size of the locks on the English canal system and then they had another round and started talking about girls. In the morning the secretary could not remember what had been decided, or indeed where he was, so to be on the safe side he chose the narrowest gauge mentioned in his notes, which was seven feet. That is how the English narrow lock was born, and the English narrowboat-the cigarette, the pencil, the eel, the strangest craft ever to slither down a waterway.

The five windows of the Phyllis May lit the towpath for the length of a cricket pitch. With her flat roof, fairground lettering, brasses and flowers, a traditional narrowboat has a louche charm, though sixty feet by seven is a preposterous shape. Clive and I stepped into the front deck and down to the narrow saloon. Panelling, armchairs, lamps and pictures-second class on the Orient Express. You live in comfort, and you live sideways.

Monica was curled on the sofa. Beryl folded her hands in her lap, in a cornflower stare. Clive stood in the middle of the saloon. We have news, he said-we are forsaking earthly things. We are selling our house and...

 

 

"A rich and winning comic debut, destined to become a classic."

 

"One of the most hilarious travel memoirs ever written!"

 

Terry Darlington was brought up in Pembroke Dock, Wales, during the war, between a flying-boat base and an oil terminal. He survived and moved to Staffordshire, where he founded Research Associates, an international market research firm, and Stone Master Marathoners, a running club. Like many Welshmen, he is talkative and confiding, ill at ease with practical matters, and liable to linger in pubs. He likes boating but knows nothing about it.

Following the publication of Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, Terry, his wife Monica, and their whippet Jim planned to sail the Phyllis May down the Intracoastal Waterway from Virginia to Florida—an adventure which, should they survive it, will be the subject of their next book, Narrow Dog to Indian River, coming from Delta in 2009.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

 

Narrow Dog to Carcassonne by Terry Darlington
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