Revised January 2021. Jo and Jan May take the crazy, wonderful, potty, life-changing decision to live on a narrowboat. This first volume of the 'At Large' series spans four years as they begin a new life on the canals and rivers of the UK. The First question is why in the world would anyone want to do that? Well, here's Jo answer: ''Back in 1995, Jan was told by her oncologist that she probably wouldn't see the new millennium. Ever since those brutal words, time has been the most precious factor in her life. So together we set out to create a new normal. But why choose a life on the water? Jan can't swim, the dog hates it and I prefer beer. Financially we were afloat and we lived in a perfectly decent house until Jan came up with the zany idea of living on a boat. I'd just got home from work, via the pub, when she asked me to watch a video while she prepared our frugal meal. I watched a pair of old fogies trundling along a canal in the rain on a narrowboat. You can imagine my reply when she asked if I fancied emulating the sodden wrinklies and taking to the water. Jan is a lady of vision and determination (she married me after all), but this was elevating madness to a whole new level. Despite lots of huffing and head-shaking, twelve months later we had sold our house, given up a job that kept us in cornflakes and moved onto a metal hole less than a tenth the size of our land-based abode - excluding garden. It was the fourth of July 2003 - Independence Day. We knew nothing about how narrowboats work or waterways lore, nor how we would cope being cooped up together - particularly when it's minus five and the nearest shop is miles away. We had a mountain to climb. You can only do that by using locks, and we'd never done a lock. A more accurate analogy is shooting the rapids, because our venture took on a life of it's own and we were washed down stream on a tide of enthusiasm and ignorance. We had to make it work or the people who had laughed and scoffed would be proved right - that we really were loopy. Well, make it work we did; we boated for twelve years. It was exciting, scary and marvellous and it quite possibly saved Jan's life." The following two volumes are A Barge at Large and A Barge at Large 2 which recount their subsequent adventures in Holland, France and Belgium on a small, ramshackle, scruffy hundred-year-old Dutch barge.

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