Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

Terry and Monica Darlington had, at seventy-five, reached the end of the line. They had done everything they could think of doing, including making their fortune and becoming athletes and running a literary society. Lately they had become boating adventurers and Terry a bestselling writer. In their Midlands canal town in November life looked dull and short on surprises. Then their famous canal boat - the Phyllis May - burned up in the boatyard. Within a few days they had bought a new one and decided to set out on an expedition to the North - to Liverpool, Lancaster, Wigan Pier and the Pennines - and as they went Terry recorded both the journey and the story of his life and his marriage and his dog Jim and Monica's dog Jess, the flying catastrophe. The heavenly basins of Liverpool, the treacherous Ribble, the unbelievable Glasson kippers, bloodstained Lancaster, the drowned Chinese, Eric Gill in his pomp at the Midland Hotel, all appear. And the Trent a torrent of mud, the endless skies of the northern drains, and crossing the Pennines from underneath. And among those who Terry and Monica met along their life's way are Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Auden, Trevor Nunn, Joanna Lumley, Charles Dunstone, Roger Mc Gough and let's not forget Bill Rogers, the most famous runner in the world, who welcomed Terry and his team to the Boston Marathon. There are also adventures in Nigeria, and Taiwan and Japan and France and the USA. But the main character is of course, with his broken ear like a flat cap, none other than Jim the whippet.He dominates every scene even when Jess, the flying catastrophe, falls victim to a duck and she and Terry are covered in blood and caught in a barbed wire fence...