Operation Vegetable

'Build houses on our vegetable plot?' fumes Judy. 'Not on my watch he doesn't.'

Deep in the English countryside live a group of unlikely characters on their narrowboats. Life at Watergrove Marina is carefree until a local landowner decides he wants to build luxury houses on the resident's vegetable patch.

In an unaccustomed act of decisiveness, the boaters decide to form a committee to fight this scourge. Step forward Judy, a lady of physical substance, fierce determination and jocular disposition, who selflessly elects herself chairwoman.

H.Q. is the local pub and it's here that our ageing boaters raise a creaking battalion. Judy leads our disparate band into battle, implementing a plan code-named Operation Vegetable, a hare-brained scheme of doubtful focus.

The boaters find help from an ageing rock star and a TV Gardening programme. Skirmish follows skirmish until one of the boaters is severely injured and the stakes are raised.

Has the despotic landowner, a man of few morals, driven by power and greed, finally met his match? Will the boaters look like toothless turnips or can they cajole wobbly bodies, ideally suited to tea-drinking, to mount the barricades?

Or....have the boaters simply lost the plot?

Operation Boomer, a second book in this series, is imminent.
The boaters return to organize an 'Olympic Games' for seniors - the Boomer Generation. There are a few new faces including The Rochdale Philosopher, a man 'from the north' who imparts wit and wisdom. He is saddled with the dubious tag line, 'never has a truer word been spoken in a vest'.