A retired British couple takes their canal boat on a cross-Channel
expedition.When some pesky person asked why the author and wife
Monica had abandoned the quiet pensioners' life and taken to the
waterways, Darlington explained it as "an adventure before it's too
late. They say at our age you are at the end of vigour." This
became something of a running joke during their travels, since this
lively pair was obviously far from decrepit. After all, they were
adventurous enough to accept a friend's booze-soaked challenge to
sail through England and across the Channel to France, then wind
their way to Carcassonne in their 60-foot by 7-foot narrowboat, "a
preposterous shape" for attempting this never-accomplished feat of
seamanship. As company, they took along their trusty whippet Jim,
"a dog that hates boating." Though the setup seems to promise a
lighthearted travelogue, and Darlington does occasionally display a
bracing, dry wit, their journey was often colored by bleak memories
of the destruction and suffering the author witnessed as a child
during World War II. In one the most moving instances of
emotionally charged reminiscence, Darlington felt the presence of
his long-dead father and longed "to press my face against his rough
air-force trousers, and smell the tobacco and feel his hands on my
head." Unfortunately, those moments of luminosity are rare in a
text more notable for overblown vacation babble, long-winded
stories, grand overstatement and pompous bombast - plus some
daunting British slang impenetrable to all but the most seasoned
Anglophile. Boat enthusiasts will appreciate the insider
terminology about locks and dock life, however, and Darlington's
gentle swipes at the French (whom he quite likes) are mildly
amusing.Some entertaining moments amid the tedium, but best saved
for a reader's retirement years, either as inspiration or to fill a
lot of spare time. (Kirkus Reviews)
'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 narrowboat 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.
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