NARROW DOG - summer 2008

New Book

The new book is called Narrow Dog to Indian River.  It tells how Terry and Monica and Jim set out to sail the Phyllis May 1100 miles down the US Intracoastal Waterway from Portsmouth Virginia to Florida.

Chapter 1 – Staffordshire – Their Gods are Not Our Gods

You can see their eyes shining round the boat

The Limey Queen of Greenwich Village – Covered Thinly with Maple Syrup – The Marine Terminal – A Thread of Silver – Captain Rob – The Wayfaring Stranger – Their Gods are Not Our Gods – Farewell party – Mum and Dad – Summerstreet Lane – The Efts – Pork Cracklins – Mantovani – Derek and the Alligator – Jesus Ears – They are Twisters and Drowners

Chapter 2 – Virginia – The Ice Storm

Ike is not as fast as Jim, but he is immensely strong

Jim in the Crate – A Real Sportsman’s Cat – The Virginia and the Monitor – Phyllis May at Mile Zero – The Ice Storm –– Desert Boots – The Screaming Eagles – Heartworm – Total Systemic Collapse – A Cruel and Senseless Crime – The Designer Handbag – Farewell Party – We Dove at Dawn

Chapter 3 – Virginia – Stand and Deliver

It had been too dark to see him properly before he grabbed me

Doctor Gormley – The Dying Whippet – Passion and Grief – Weather from Hell – A Continuous Plangent Shriek – Young Doctor Berger in Apple Green – Your Rat? – Just One More Day – The Cancellation – Rusty the Sheriff – The Jellyfish – It’s Just Not Going to be Me Any More – All the Shadows, All the Memories – You Have Had No Egrets? – Two Hundred and Fifty Beats a Minute – Stand and Deliver

Chapter 4 – Virginia – The Village of the Damned

They will burst out of me and run round the butter dish

Reversed Roadside Skipper – The Boo Ease – The Village of the Damned – The Rapture – Quick, Up There! – Night of the Living Dead – The Bionic Woman – Bread of Heaven – This Guy Doesn’t Understand English! – The Giant Frog – The Red Bugs – The Flood – For you, Tommy, the War Is Over - The Turtle Not the Mock – The Blue Crabs – Higher and Higher – The Sub-machine-gun – Letter to the Captains

Chapter 5 – North Carolina – The Terrible Sounds

The gongoozlers attacked from all sides

Let’s Boogie! – The Great Dismal Swamp Canal – The Return of Tits Magee – Why Are We Sinking? – Letter from Bethan – The Dirty Grocer – Over-sized, Over-priced, and Over There – Your First Late Cut to the Boundary – White Sails, Tall and Leaning Hard – Blush Chablis – An Intellectual Error of Some Importance – A Typhoon of Typhoo – Through the World’s Tempestuous Seas

Chapter 6 – North Carolina – Why Am I So Cold?

Who are those people at the bridge to meet me?

Jim Goes for the Throat – One Day You’ll Find out Where She Gets it – Breakfast with Eisenhower – A Dying Man Falls Into the Boat – Accept Your New Scuppers As a Sign of Welcome– The Seven Lucky Teeth – Why Am I So Cold? – Tennessee Honey – Backwards to Florida

Chapter 7 – North Carolina – Sea of Grass

You know what you are, Terence my son?

The Most Wonderful Moment – Tears for Jackie – Half a Dozen Beards on Stools – The Gongoozler’s Charter – It’s Only Us, Said the Porpoises – The Swansboro Scale – Sea of Grass –A Great Deal of Water Rushing About –– You Know What You Are, Terence My Son? – With a Wag of His Tail He Was Gone – I Heard It Singing in the Wires – A Fox Jumped Her From the Garden Shed – Jim in the Zone – Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever – What About the Piranhas? – Crossing the Cape Fear River – The Brits Started Drinking at Ten in the Morning – I’ll Just Die if I Don’t Get That Recipe – I Blasted it with a Shotgun – A Summer Place

Chapter 8 – South Carolina – It’s Called Being Friendly

Memories hang from trees like moss, like photos of the dead

Santa Claus is Coming to Town – The New Work of Giants – the Lowcountry – We Don’t Care How You Do Things up North – Message in a Bottle – Verdurous Glooms and Winding Mossy Ways – Three Generations at Thanksgiving – Bum on the Road and Wind in the Hair

Chapter 9 – South Carolina – Even in Arcadia

The boat is fizzing away into half a pint of diet coke

Jim Hit Him Before He Reached the Ground – The Beautiful Hunley Most Like to a Fish – It Effulged with Chrome – Don’t Forget the Diver – Old and Mad and Busy and Joyful – A Satisfying and Well-balanced Meal – They Never Found the Gorilla – The Mine Dropped Off and Started to Tick – Even in Arcadia – We’re Not Going to Die – The Marina of the Damned – Ready to Run Across the Room and Dive Out of the Window

Chapter 10 – Georgia – Raining all over the world

It’s three o’clock in the morning when dreadful things happen

Just a Sad Sweet Song – I Think It is Titanium Slag – The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner – Now She is Like the Rest – Only the US Army Can Save Us – Three Thousand Acres of Trees – Now That’s What I Call Hospitality – A Sour and Plangent  Bellow – Pretty T-shirt and Silver Sandals – Dreadful Things at Three in the Morning – One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus

Chapter 11 – Georgia – Treasure Island

Make me mad! shouted Admiral Rickover

We Need a Qualified Sea Captain and a Professional Weather Forecaster-– Meanest Armadillo in the Whole Damn Town – Treasure Island – Leroy Was Here –Written in the Wind – The Snake Bird – Fresh Transfigurings of Deepest Blue – The Sad Discussion of Sin – Drunkenness of the Deep – Rickover’s Final Defence

Chapter 12 – Florida – d’incroyables Florides

The battle against evil is all but won

Down Nassau Sound we Did Roam – He’s Coming in on the Grab-rail – The Small Hairy Dog Began to Sing Moon River – Plastic Lawn Deer – Like a Truck Falling on You – In Defence of Their Eggs – Gliding Like You Glide in Gliding Dreams – America’s Worst Defeat – The Failing Theme Park – You Jump Out of the Capsule and Whizz Down the Wire – The Bum Under the Bridge – The Careless White Bone, the Excellence – He’s a Shoplifter as Well as a Scrounger and a General Thief – We Go Tomorrow

Chapter 13 – Florida – Look For me There

Maybe we will be taken up in the Gulf of Mexico

The Sound of Fear – Did You Make it Yourself? –  Night of White Satin – You Put Your Left Hand In – Green Cheeks and Thin Black Legs – The Dancing Dick – The Attack of the Twelve-foot Alligator – The Whiskered Death –Fat Man Come in Red Boat – Look for Me There – The Red Tide – The Long Pink Tongue for the Salty Bits in the Corners

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