We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. Narrow Dog is a bit like that: on the page, Darlington never uses quotation marks (which for some reason always makes a novel read as a lot more 'literary', at least for me) and never wastes time on exposition. Clive, I said, you come from Dudley, you have been to sea once and you nearly didn't come back, and now you want to put at hazard the December years I could spend in the Star or watching Kylie Minogue on the box. Having been on two narrowboat holidays, one on the Oxford Canal I was really looking forward to this but sadly I just struggled far to much with the style of writing to find it enjoyable.

wasted pages trying to colorize a not very interesting trip - one in which the authors didn't seem to enjoy. But today I wound up the paddles in the lock gate with my new aluminium key without spraining my wrist, and when the lock was empty heaved on the beams and opened the gates without shouting for help.When I woke up the next morning, and I wished I had not woken up the next morning, I realized that I had agreed to sail an inland boat across the English Channel, roped up to a madman. Aliens, dicks, trolls, vandals, gongoozlers, killer fish and the walking dead all stand between our three innocents and their goal – many-towered Carcassonne. This sounds like bar-room tall story, exaggeration, but then a second time round it changes to them and their boat being attacked by fighter-bombers - are the tall stories getting taller? From the blurb I'd expected a more straightforward sort of comedy memoir in the style of Bill Bryson, but Terry Darlington's prose is almost Joycean - full of brief sentences, poetic allusions, stream-of-consciousness, foreign phrases and bawdy jokes. Nothing wrong with the story but since I KNOW the USA, and can picture the places they went, it was just more relatable.

Aliens, trolls, gongoozlers, killer fish, and the walking dead all stand between our two-person, one-whippet crew and their goal: the ancient, many-towered city of Carcassonne. As soon as I began reading it, I realised my aunt would give up - since the complete absence of quotation marks makes the reading of it confusing. I don't think there is a Woolworths in Bewdley, said Clive, but if there is I can pick up a CD of Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenaders.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. However, R L Stephenson in his "Inland Voyage" or Jerome K Jerome in his "Three men in a Boat" didn't supply maps either, and both are classics.

They took advise from nautical experts, who told them they would lose their boat and their lives (and, indeed, their whippet Jim). I felt this all through the book, but couldn't quite put my finger on it, and then discovered on finishing the tale that he'd penned a little postscript pointing to all the literary allusions and quotations he'd peppered the book with. His love for his wife and for Jim, the Whippet narrow dog of the title, come through on every page; as does everyone's need to sometimes go off alone or become surly (dogs and people) when confined to tight quarters for long periods. Along for the journey would be their faithful whippet named Jim and their course would take them not only along the picturesque canals of Europe, but also on the River Thames and across the English Channel. 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.The brass plates of doctors and lawyers have a piece of paper with yellowing tape saying that no opinion will be offered until ten to three Thursday fortnight.