Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Page 21
We seem to polarize opinion – some people stop us in the street to shake our hands and call us brave and others write blogs calling us idiots. Three-quarters of Amazon comments on Narrow Dog to Carcassonne give the book five stars and the rest one star. The positive guys say the kindest things, but the negative chaps get really worked up – festering, he’s on drugs. It is hard to believe they are reading the same book.
Was it brave to sail a narrowboat over the Channel? Sometimes I look back and it seems easy, and other times I begin to sweat. But remember a large number of people have crossed the Channel in no boat at all, though as far as I know no one has done it since in a narrowboat. Perhaps they saw the footage of us crossing the wake of the ferry.
A long break in Calais to come to terms with the fact we had done the crossing, then away through Belgium, into Paris, down the Burgundy Canal, down the Rhône to the Camargue and the Mediterranean, into the Canal du Midi and so to Carcassonne. Coming from Wales, we had already seen a few castles, but the citadel of Carcassonne is beautiful and startling.
In Carcassonne we gave someone a lot of money and he came with a big lorry and on a separate lorry a mobile crane. The crane was yellow and like Thunderbirds,4 and the driver was tall and handsome and wore a white uniform. When he arrived he spent an hour polishing the crane. Then he put lifting wires round the Phyllis May and set her seventeen tons swinging in mid-air and she fell out and dropped into the basin. Then he hoisted her up again and gave me a rope and suggested I control her and knocked the concrete ball off the marina gatepost.
Narrow Dog to Carcassonne went into the publisher and came back out as proofs.
Hand me my first copy of one of my books and I will smile, but send me proofs and my heart sings. I love working with the copy editor, the little final choices, the last flick of the polishing brush.
I love the arcane signs of the proofing alphabet. I love pushing the omelette of language by choosing un-familiar words like dove instead of dived, spitten instead of spitting. I love using words like omelette when I shouldn’t. I love the sense of power when I override a publisher’s suggestion – stet – let it stand. Amid all the frustrations and humiliations of a writer’s life is the moment when you are reminded that without you there is no money for the printer, for the bookseller, the publisher, no pleasure for the reader. This is your baby and you choose the ribbons for its hair.
I set about getting as much publicity as I could for my book. My publisher’s marketing people advised me not to trouble myself with such activity as I was an arteest. But I see the writing and the marketing of a book as part of the same process.
On our return from France the local paper welcomed us home and the serious papers picked up the story and soon we were, as they say, everywhere. Nine seven-minute spots on Waterworld, produced by the Incredible Leaping Producer, ensured that in the Midlands we would be stopped in the street ten years later. Then the publisher put its weight to the lock beam and we found ourselves on breakfast telly and chat shows without number.
Whippets are people, said Kate Silverton5 on Breakfast, and Dermot Murnaghan smiled as if we had already made his day. A dab with a powder puff and we were pushed out in front of a sleepy nation. I was more frightened than I had been while crossing the Channel, but we managed to answer a few questions and have a laugh.
Whyever did you do it? asked Libby Purves6 on Midweek.
So I could boast about it in public houses, I explained. How far did you actually go out into the Mediterranean?
Oh, I don’t know – twenty, thirty yards.
Interviewers always ask why we did it. When Sandi Toksvig7 asked I quoted from Narrow Dog to Indian River –
Our feelings surprised us both – this longing to sail out into the dawn, this ache to try our courage, to extend our range, to know what we did not know, to be who we were meant to be.
We met Joanna Lumley8 – more of a visitation than a meeting. I don’t think we were introduced and I did not say a word, just dribbled lightly. She came across the room, immensely tall. She did not walk – she sort of slid. She came and stood right before me, blotting out the scene. Just those eyes, the golden hair. She took my little face in her hands and rubbed my beard. You lovely lovely man, she said.
Either she had read Carcassonne or she had been overwhelmed by my aquiline good looks or the cut of the only suit I could still get into. Anyway now when the shadows gather and all forsake me and the wind is like a knife and the beer is sour and they are sending back my manuscripts and Jim has thrown up on the hearthrug and Monica is saying she has had a bloody nuff I can always say to myself – Joanna stroked my beard.
One evening about half past ten we found ourselves in a dim studio and at the mike on the other end of a long table was Henry Kelly, a thin Irishman. Oh goodness, we cried, we remember you in that TV show.
Where are you from?
We told him.
Ah, Stafford! Do you know Lord Stafford? Lord Stafford, dear Staffie, what fun we have had. He is a member of the aristocracy, you know, a senior member of the aristocracy, and as it happens a dear friend of mine. So many evenings in laughter and chat, so many dew-drenched rides round Swynnerton. Soon we will meet again and I shall feel his firm handshake, see that brow wrinkle with laughter …
We expected Lord Stafford to creep into the studio at any moment and come up behind Henry Kelly and plant a kiss on the top of his head.
Then Henry Kelly decided to tell us a joke. We had heard it before, but perhaps you have not –
An actor trying to get to London from the Midlands could not afford the rail fare so he went down to the canal to try his luck. Soon he came across a seventy-foot barge loaded with horse manure.
My dear man, can I trouble you for a ride on your barge? I am going to London and I am temporarily short of funds and it would oblige me considerably. I will make a modest payment and do my best to assist you in small ways as we travel.
The bargee was a good soul. Make yourself comfortable on top of the load, old darling. You can help at the locks.
Off they went, the horses plodding steadily – they knew what they were doing and the actor dozed as they slipped down the long pounds.
They came to a loading office. The official shouted What are you carrying?
Thirty tons of shit and an actor! cried the bargee.
On towards the south down the long pounds to another loading office.
What are you carrying?
Thirty tons of shit and an actor!
The actor stepped off on to the towpath and walked back to the stern where the bargee stood at the tiller. I wonder if I could have a word?
A word?
Yes, I’d like to have a word about the billing.
A few days after the paperback launch of Carcassonne we set out for the USA to begin our Narrow Dog to Indian River voyage.
We called at three bookshops in Heathrow but Narrow Dog to Carcassonne had sold out. It appeared in the Sunday Times top ten and sold the best part of two hundred thousand copies and is still selling. It was short-listed for the Saga Award for Wit and in the USA won the Audie for the best non-fiction audiobook of the year. The judges said they could not face another historical biography and canals and a whippet suited them just fine.
The book was translated into German and into Polish. I did not get on with the Poles, who wrote to me asking if they could put the punctuation back in and proposed a cover which would have suited a book called My Dog Died of Grief in Gdansk.
Narrow Dog to Indian River was also a Sunday Times bestseller and a travel bestseller in the US though it did not reach the heights of Carcassonne. When you think of it – not many people go to the south-east coast of the USA.
But our nine months in Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida and our thousand-mile voyage gave us the most treasured memories of our lives. The shining sounds, crossing Moon River, the ocean on our left and on our right the Marshes of Glynn, the dolphins, the pelicans, the alligators even, and mos
t of all the Yanks, with their overflowing hospitality.
All our stories are in the book, except how the boat got back. It was craned out from Owl Creek near Fort Myers and driven back across the continent to Portsmouth, Virginia, then into a container ship and to Liverpool and Stone. Not a cup was broken.
We developed a website,9 and fan letters arrived from all over the world – thousands of them, full of stories and pictures. Monica took over and we answered them all. We like fan letters and we like fans – they are like gongoozlers but better. Gongoozlers do nothing but stare and perhaps ask a daft question. Fans have at least written a letter. Most are enthusiastic about how I write but a few ask Why don’t I use inverted commas to indicate speech? Nearly everyone else does after all.
It is time to tell the truth. My publisher, Transworld, a model of efficiency in so many ways, but not all, emailed me and explained that Bill Bryson10 had used up all the inverted commas and perhaps I could think of a way to do without them, and while I was at it could I go easy on the aitches?
Well, what can you do? I wanted my book out there, so I worked out a sort of stream-of-consciousness way of writing which left out the inverted commas. I told everyone it was a modern way to write and used a lot in the States by advanced arteests.
When Transworld came back and said they were now starting to get worried about the shortage of esses I told them Bugger off – have a word with Andy McNab.11
Early on the requests for talks started to arrive. Monica took these on too and I came along to the big ones. A full hall at a public school – the kids thrilled with the dogs. A theatre at Ilkley, a church at Redditch, two hundred people in Stafford.
At Saul Junction on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal Monica gave a talk about our US adventure, in the belly of an old barge.
I was reading extracts –
Cascades of water were coming into the front deck, and against the front window like a rainstorm from hell. Slap, spray, the air full of waterfalls. Outside the windows a maelstrom of blue waves and sunlight and foam. Would the front deck drain, or fill and sink us?
There was a crashing of water as a wave fell down from the ceiling and drenched us both. It was raining and the canvas covering the old boat had split.
Let’s hear it for the guys in special effects, I said.
I quite often look on the web for the latest postings about Narrow Dog to Carcassonne and Narrow Dog to Indian River and indeed about me and Monica and the Phyllis May and Jim and Jess. It is extraordinary how much stuff there is, and always something new. If I forget what I am doing I can always look myself up.
One US site Wellreadhostess posted a long review of Carcassonne, and the lady who wrote it seemed to know more about my writing style than I did. She had a lot of trouble deciding whether she loved or hated the book, but came down on the right side in the end.
Dear Wellreadhostess
On 24th July you posted a piece about Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, written by Terry Darlington. I was that Terry Darlington, and indeed I still am. I enjoyed your comments, and if they erred it was on the side of generosity.
You enquire about Shakin’ Stevens. In the UK he is slightly less well known than Father Christmas. He looks and sings like a caponized Elvis.
You point out that I use ‘epic and deadly personification’ – for example – ‘Villeneuve had swept its stone quay and turned its pansies to the sun and checked that its electricity was pure sine wave.’ I was quite unaware of this – in my flawed mind things often appear as other things or people and I seem to tip over into fantasy without realizing it.
I shall not attempt to defend my style of writing, except to say that when I realized some people did not like it I cried all the way to the bestseller lists. But in explanation – I find conversation marks make an ugly page and follow some of the US modern writers (Sontag, Doctorow) in leaving them out. I love riddles and running gags and see no reason why every reader should enjoy every sentence as long as he is involved with the flow. I like to ambush and frustrate and surprise the reader and make him work. I suppose in that way I am the last of the modernists.
* * *
We are going under the Pennines, said Monica. See there they are on the map, the backbone of England, all the way down to the last flicker in Stone. To get up the Pennines we have to do forty-two locks in eight miles and then the biggest canal tunnel in the UK. It’s THE STANDEDGE TUNNEL.12
She paused, so I could hear the blast of music that followed her words, just like the Dr Morelle thriller on the radio last night, when Ernest put the trumpets in behind his most dramatic moments.
But I have been through the Harecastle Tunnel,13 I said, where the walls come at you crashing, and rivers run down your neck. You can’t scare me.
The Standedge Tunnel is much worse, said Monica. You have to book in advance and a British Waterways guy is on the back with you and it is too low and narrow for the boat and it keeps changing its size and direction and you have to wear a hard hat because it bashes you around and it takes two hours to go through.
I’ve been three times through the Harecastle, I said. Nothing is worse than the Harecastle – how can it be?
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal is the same gauge as the Midlands canals, but the locks are deeper and the lock paddles are not to be lifted by mortal arms.
Under a bridge and at once we were stretched out on the mud like a beached whale. You can deal with many sorts of trouble from a narrowboat but you really do need water. In fact I would venture that water is necessary to the whole activity of boating. The water in the pound came up an inch and then went down again.
A British Waterways chap appeared. These excellent fellows in their green overalls sleep behind the bushes on the locksides and when they sense trouble they wake up and stretch and grab a spanner and a windlass and come out and help you. I’ll let some water in from up ahead, said the chap.
He went up and round the corner to the next lock and worked the paddles and a very small amount of water ran down to us. I started the engine and the PM2 dragged herself along the mud like a wounded snake. Now and then her prop cracked on rocks. This was a new sort of boating – navigating a small pond in the middle of the cut, with mudbanks around you, trying to guess where the deepest inches lay under the muddy water. I was quite good at it, but I didn’t enjoy it, and it was deadly slow.
There were other hills to climb. We have two wind-lasses with which we wind the lock paddles up and down – one is shiny and neat and light for normal use. The other is heavy with a longer handle. At one lock Monica could not wind up the paddles even with the heavy windlass so I got out of the boat to help. I put all my weight on the shaft and it started to bend. I was afraid I would break the windlass, which in turn would break my wrist and fly up and spoil my looks. I changed my angle and at last the paddle began to shift.
I want to do some locks, I said. I need the exercise.
I walked up ahead swinging the windlass, the dogs trotting in front on their leads. We cannot let Jess run free for another ten days in case she breaks her leg again. She is trotting freely on her bandaged leg – perhaps just throwing that broken paw a fraction. What a miracle that paw is, so soft and flexible but strong enough to take the shock of a turn at forty miles an hour. What skill to mend it when it was broken off –
And what shoulder and what art14
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
Oh dear I’m at the wrong end of the lock. Now which way does this windlass turn? These steps make me feel dizzy.
Monica is shouting – You have left a paddle up.
I must be tired and it’s the shingles medication – I get sleepy and confused. If I carry on like this I’ll finish up in the bottom of a lock.
If you carry on like this, shouted Monica, you’ll finish up in the bottom of a lock.
It rained like the end of the world.
The next day we had another ten locks to do and that is a lot of locks when the paddles are stiff and even i
f you get through you might not have any water on the other side. We were closing on a town called Slaithwaite. It is one of those places pronounced different to how it is spelt. It is spelt Slaithwaite but pronounced St Petersburg or something.
Pretending a problem isn’t there, however monstrous, even when it is staring you in the face, is one of the most common and effective strategies in life. That is how the nation dealt with Jive Bunny,15 and John Prescott.16 But the strategy never works on a boat. Ignore a rattle and a piece of your boat will tear itself off and fall into the cut. Ignore a whippet whining at night and heaven knows what will face you in the morning. Get something on the prop and it will stall you in a cross-current as the trip boat is coming for you.
I looked behind me – look behind you! There was no clean tunnel of prop-wash but a confused mess of foam. The tiller was rattling and I had slowed and my steering was off. We pulled in and I lifted the trap in the back counter and lowered myself until I was sitting in the engine. I reached down through the weed-hatch and felt round the propeller. One always fears something sharp, or something dead.
Once we pulled up through the weed-hatch a hundred yards of wire. Another time it was a duvet, and the boat filled with feathers. Then there was that rather nice sweater that I wore for a while. This time it was a sack, not made of sacking but a white fibre like steel. It had been thoroughly mashed but I got it up before lunch.
When we reached the mouth of the Standedge Tunnel there was one of those information centres with no one in it and no information. The rain was pitiless. A British Waterways man appeared – You need to take the cratch cover off or it will get torn, and the navigation lights.
The navigation lights? But they are only pimples! My pretty little brass navigation lights? But they will help light our way through the mysterious caverns of your great tunnel!
I had never screwed or unscrewed anything into the steel of the boat before, but the lights came off easily. The British Waterways man fitted me with a white hard hat and stepped on the back counter with me. He was small and fair and muscular and white-hatted and yellow-jacketed and life-jacketed and had been doing this for ten years.