Product Description

'We could bore ourselves to death, drink ourselves to death, or have a bit of an adventure...' When they retired, Terry and Monica Darlington decided to sail their canal narrow boat across the Channel and down to the Mediterranean, together with their whippet Jim. They took advice from experts, who said they would die, together with their whippet Jim. On the Phyllis May, you dive through six-foot waves in the Channel, are swept down the terrible Rhone, and fight for your life in a storm among the flamingos of the Camargue. You meet the French nobody meets - poets, captains, historians, drunks, bargees, men with guns, scholars, madmen - they all want to know the people on the painted boat and their narrow dog. You visit the France nobody knows - the backwaters of Flanders, the canals beneath Paris, the heavenly Yonne, the lost Burgundy Canal, the islands of the Saone, and the forbidden ways to the Mediterranean. Aliens, dicks, trolls, vandals, gongoozlers, killer fish and the walking dead all stand between our three innocents and their goal - many-towered Carcassonne.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3417 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 329 pages

Timothy West and Prunella Scales
'Pru and I found the book wonderfully entertaining. I read 'Narrow Dog' pretty well at one sitting...a lovely book'

Good Book Guide
'Written with the author's glorious sense of humour, this is one of those journeys you never want to end'

Joanna Lumley
'A stunning book - racy, chatty, touching, and very, very funny'

Customer Reviews

First class scratchings!
If you want to know what scratchings are you'll have to read the book. Narrow dog was a great read, I didn't want the journey to be over to be honest. Contrary to some of the (very few) negative reviews received here, I found the writing refreshing and different and as one reviewer put it 'as if I was a friend travelling with them'. I love Jim and think that Terry and Monica must be very laid back characters, at least they have the backbone to get up and do something rather than just festering away like so many other people do! I also enjoyed very much the french lesson at the end, most useful! Three cheers Terry, can't wait for the next one!

Strange but funny
This is my mother's favourite book, and I have to say that I don't quite share her enthusiasm, although it was amusing enough at times. This is the true story of Darlington and his wife, both retirees, who own a narrow boat which they use to pootle up and down the waterways of the black country. They also have a very nervous dog which travels with them with great reluctance and spends a lot of time hyperventilating. For some strange reason one day they take it into their heads that the thing to do would be to take the narrow boat through England, across the channel and down through France. This is, if you know anything at all about narrow boats, extremely dangerous. They are not made for waves, they are about as good at steering as a child in a bumper car, and they are so heavy they sink during times of adversity. The book is the tale of their ill conceived oddity.
At times it is very funny, and is always very honest. It is however written in an singularly peculiar style which I found rather trying and incredibly hard to get into. It was at worst like reading a very poor translation, at best quirky, and almost always annoying. If you can get past the style issues, it is a good book, but you really have to work at it.

An extraordinary journey festooned with humorous happenings.
Brilliantly written by a true master of British humour. A travel journal glowing with caricatures of so many specimens of the human race; what daring hearts these brave adventurous pensioners have. Only a genius can write like this; laptop on lap, tongue in cheek and hand feeding pork scratchings to a sea sick whippet.

One of my favourite of many hysterical passages (especially as I love dogs and rabbits):

"The field was big, and there were dozens of rabbits grazing a yard from the hedges. I aimed the torch. They stopped chewing and sat transfixed, their eyes shining. Jim began to scream softly, like a fiend in hell watching a likely soul go over the wall. I cried havoc and let him slip. As he approached at forty miles an hour the rabbits stepped into the hedge, and when he had gone they stepped back out again."

This book will keep coming off the bookshelf to be read again and again. I hope the Darlingtons and Jim will have a follow up adventure!