On Thursday 26th January 2017 my latest book The Piano Raft with be officially released.

I was rather excited to see pre-sales of this book took it straight to No1 on Amazon UK!

The Piano Raft brings me back to the UK and the story sets sail (excuse the pun) in a town called Greater Lotherton in Yorkshire.

To set the scene, here is the synopsis:

The Piano Raft is an unforgettable, heart-warming story about love, a piano and a hand-built raft that will have you enthralled, laughing and sitting on the edge of your seat as you sail (precariously) upon the rivers and canals from Yorkshire to London.

Neil, a disillusioned art student, wakes to find himself drifting down a canal on a raft, accompanied by a small fluffy dog, to the sound of his girlfriend's piano being played by a stranger.

Through the fog of his hangover, he tries to piece together the events of the night before which brought him to this curious and unexpected situation, and to work out what on earth to do next.

The current is carrying him swiftly on towards the capital, where Kim, the piano's owner, has recently started a new life.

As Neil’s journey continues, and whilst trying to conjure the courage to win Kim back, his story captures the hearts and imaginations of the country as locals in the towns he passes and national media alike follow this unlikely hero on his equally unlikely adventure.

How will these extraordinary circumstances challenge and change a man whose life has been stuck in first gear, and who now needs to decide how far he will go for the woman he loves?

The current is swift, and there's no turning back...

I wanted to share with you an excerpt from the story, an encounter Neil has with a homeless man.

‘You all right, laddie?’ croaks a voice, quite near to him, which sounds like it might not be all right itself, it’s so phlegmy and guttural. The voice coughs, a great hacking noise that scares the birds from the hedges on the edge of the towpath.

Neil straightens up, still out of breath, to meet this new stranger, and immediately any concerns for his own wheezing chest are gone. The man before him has grey hair sticking up at all angles, long in some places, short in others. He is not tall but he is very bulky, and he is enveloped in a herringbone tweed overcoat that drops to his ankles. The coat is shiny at the collar and sleeves and blackened around the knees and hips. A few turns of rough string serve as a belt around the waist, finished with a knot. Protruding below the edge of the coat are what look like rubber boots cut to slip over a pair of brogues with no shine left to them at all.

Neil looks back to the man’s face. He has not had a shave recently and his skin is a dirty brown, making it seem tough like leather, the creases permanent. But his eyes are a light blue, and they dance as he looks at Neil and his mouth twitches ready to smile.

‘I thought you were going to keel over then.’ His grating voice is again at odds with the bird calls in the hedge behind him.

‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’ Neil looks down the path and takes a few more deep breaths. He needs to keep moving, to catch up.

‘You lost something?’ The man takes his hands out of his pockets, revealing fraying fingerless mittens. He holds up a cigarette end. ‘Got a light?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Ah, wise, very wise. Nine days out of ten, neither do I. But then a nice dog end presents itself, and I say to myself, why not!’

‘Sorry, but I have to go.’

‘What’s your rush?’

‘My raft.’

‘Raft?’

‘Yes, my Pianoraft.’

‘Oh! You mean that thing with the drawers and the piano on it that all those people were pulling?’

‘Yes, that’s it. Look, I’m sorry but I really have to go … Bye.’

‘Well, bye if you want, but if you’re looking to catch it up you have all the time in the word. Do you have a light?’

‘You already asked that. Why do I have all the time in the world?’

‘Sixteen Locks. Down that way, five miles. It’ll take them a good long time to get through, and that’s if nothing is halfway up, coming the other way. I’ve seen people stuck there up to a day.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. No light, eh?’

‘No, no light.’

The tramp looks longingly at his half cigarette and then returns it and his hands to his pockets and starts to walk the way Neil will be going.

‘A whole day, you reckon?’

‘Have you been through a lock with your raft?’

‘Yes.’

‘Remember how long it took?’

‘Yes.’

‘Times it by sixteen.’

Neil feels all the tension in his shoulders drop and his tight thigh muscles relax. But there is still Fuzzy-Pants.

‘And even walking slowly you’ll be there in two or three hours, no worries.’

She’ll manage – she’ll sleep, most likely.

‘So why are you floating a piano down the canal? You a musician?’

‘Trying to make amends to my girlfriend, Kim. She wanted to move to London, and I wasn’t so sure. This is meant to be a big romantic gesture to say sorry and show how important she is to me.’

‘Don’t blame you, though.’

‘I’m Neil, by the way.’

‘Honoured to meet you, sir. My name’s Quentin.’ With the phlegm cleared from his throat, his voice is distinctive, educated.

‘Don’t blame me for what?’

‘Not much relishing the thought of London.’ He stops to look around; the hills roll away from them on all sides, dotted with trees, fields lined with hedges, cows lying down, chewing their cud.

‘It’s the lack of trees and nature and so on, but it’s also the fear of being sucked in.’

‘Sucked in?’ Quentin takes his hands out of his pockets and looks at his cigarette end. ‘No light, you said?’

Neil ignores the question this time. The cigarette is returned to the folds of the oversized coat.

‘The whole rat race thing, getting up crazy early to run all day and going home late just to afford a house you never spend any time living in.’

‘Ah yes,’ Quentin says, sounding like a wise old sage. ‘The rat race.’

‘You must know what I mean? After all, you’ve opted out of all that?’

‘Opted out – I like that. Yes, I suppose I’ve opted out. So are you saying you want to opt out?’

‘Well, no, not like …’ He is about to say ‘not like you’ but realises that this could sound rude, so he finishes with ‘… not completely.’

‘Well, it has to be complete, else you are still in it,’ Quentin offers, which makes Neil smile.

‘You have a point.’

‘So, you think if you went to London you would get a great job and an expensive house and then run in circles to keep your expensive house. You, the man who is floating to London on a pile of sticks with a piano on top?’

Neil cannot help chuckling; the man is funny. ‘Not immediately, obviously.’

‘So when would you get all that, then?’

‘Well, it sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?’

‘You know what your life is? Your life is merely a combination of the things you are prepared to put up with.’

Neil smiles. It sounds like a joke, but then he runs over the words again.

‘You think?’

‘I know. When the “worst” I would put up with was a detached house, two kids and a wife, that’s what I had. I didn’t want more so I didn’t work to get more, because I was prepared to put up with what I had. I would have taken more if it had been offered for free, but if it required my work then I didn’t want it. The house and family was the “worst” I would put up with. If as a family, for some reason, we ended up in a tiny caravan, I would not have put up with that, so I would have worked to get out, do you see? Our lives are a combination of the worst things we will put up with.’

Now Quentin chuckles as if it is a joke, but Neil is serious.

‘I’ve never thought of it like that.’

‘But Kim wants it.’

‘Then which will you put up with? No London and no Kim? Or London and Kim? Besides, it’s all in your head anyway.’

‘What’s all in my head?’ As Neil walks, he looks at Quentin’s face, at his dancing blue eyes. He exudes charm.

‘The universe is in your head,’ Quentin says.

Well, it’s either charm or insanity.

‘Then I must have a big head,’ Neil jokes and takes his cowboy hat off, and then his jumper to sling it around his hips. The sun is heating up the day. He looks at his companion’s thick tweed coat. ‘Aren’t you hot in that coat?’

‘Hot, cold, all in your head.’

Neil does not answer. He looks ahead, hoping to see signs of Sixteen Locks and his raft, but the canal stretches into the distance, where it lazily wends left and disappears. They continue to walk in silence. Neil listens to the birds in the hedgerows, and he spots a fox slinking along the perimeter of a field with rabbits dotted here and there that nibble the bright green grass. He can see the openings to their burrows, too, all over the field. The fox doesn’t have a chance: the rabbits will be too quick, and they are too close to home.

‘You can be free in a jail cell and lonely in a crowd,’ Quentin growls. He could be a radio newsreader with that voice. ‘Because the universe is in your head.’

‘Hm.’ Neil is still watching the fox, which is sneaking closer to the rabbits. A rabbit freezes: it looks like it will run, but then it carries on eating. ‘You mean you need to look inwardly and get all spiritual?’ Another has its head up now, alert.

‘No!’ Quentin barks loudly and stops walking.
Concerned, Neil turns to face him. Has he offended the old man?

‘You look outward. Outward! If you look inward all you see is yourself! I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.’ He starts to walk again.

The fox makes its move and the rabbits run. The fox runs low and hard but the white tails disappear into the holes one by one, plop plop, plop, leaving the cunning one exposed on the hillside. The predator looks uncertain now and slinks between gorse and rocks back to the shelter of the hedges.

‘How long have you been on the road?’ Neil asks.

‘No idea,’ Quentin grunts.

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