I picked up this book free during an Amazon giveaway. Devoted sailors Kathleen and her husband John started their retirement as lockkeepers on the river Avon near Tewkesbury. Kathleen narrates tales from their lockkeeping days.
Amateur and disorganized, but a clever title, a sweet story, and enjoyable as a piece of living history. I also googled "Avon Lock, Tewkesbury" and saw Avon Lock Cottage and the lock itself connecting the two fairly small rivers. Balchin has a good command of language, but the lack of an editor shows in an unfocused storyline that includes irrelevant events such as a vacation to Spain, repeated phrases, and occasional misuse of words, such as bye-laws instead of by-laws. (Probably the funniest was "bosums" when she meant "bosoms!") There are two problems specific to the Kindle edition. One is that there is neither an indent nor a skipped line to indicate the start of a new paragraph, which was mildly distracting. The other is although there is an illustrator credited on the book information page, there are no illustrations in the book, and I bet they would have added a lot to the story. While there was much room for improvement, the book kept me reading to the end.
