“We didn't stow away!" Dan protested. "You sunk our boat and pulled us out of the canal!""Good point," Ian agreed. "Return them to the canal. Roughly, please.”

“It's nice, this. The canal." He looks at me. "You.""I'll bet you say that to all the canals.”

“At first there was no highway code for the canals and rules were soon needed to control the boats especially on the busy industrial sections. When one horse drawn boat passed another, someone had to give way and allow their towing rope to fall to the bottom of the canal to enable the other boat to pass over it. Rules were drawn up as to which type of boat or cargo had precedence but often it came down to who shouted the loudest.”

“We landed, in fact, parallel to a canal, like there were two runways: one for us and one for waterfowl.”

“She looked around. They had drifted far away from the bank of the canal. "Are we stealing this boat?" "Stealing' is such an ugly word," he mused. "What do you want to call it?" He picked her up and swung her around before putting her down. "An extreme case of window-shopping.”

“I imagine she came out of the birth canal holding a cupcake and a spatula.”