Suddenly Paddywack perked up, ears pricked and happy as if he’d understood every word.

“Time to move on Paddywack. This whole town is full of memories, good memories mostly, but without Marion they’ll be sad memories and I reckon they’ll only get sadder. I need new places, new faces. Never go back, never go back. I don’t know if it’s the same for dogs, but I don’t think people were made to stay put at all. I mean, look at us, look at all those houses – little boxes every one of them. Most of us live in little boxes like that all our lives. That’s what I’ve done anyway. We don’t really want to. It’s like we build our own prisons. All right, we may go on holiday from time to time, so we can pretend we’re free for a while, but we always come back to our same little box. I don’t think that’s natural. What about you, Paddywack? Are you the wandering kind? I hope so, I really hope so. Just so long as you don’t wander away from me.”

It took no more than a few days for Joe to install the potato oven in The Lady Marion. He tried to sell the Tattyvan all over town, but being the odd shape it was that didn’t prove at all easy. In the end he had to give it away as scrap. “That van was good to me, Paddywack,” he said. “Still, it was scrap when I got it, and now it’ll be scrap again. That’s recycling, nothing to get fussed about I suppose. But all the same it makes me sad.”

Paddywack wasn’t listening. He was racing off down the towpath towards the barge, scattering ducks and moorhens as he went. He never bothered with the gangplank. He just leaped across on to the deck and made his way at once to the bow, already his favourite place on The Lady Marion, where he stood stock still, on the lookout for anything that moved, swans swimming by or dogs on the towpath, or a flurry of ducks flying over.

That same afternoon Joe started the engine and cast off. The barge moved slowly away from the bank and down the canal, Paddywack still on lookout and Joe at the wheel. Day after day, if the weather was fine, that’s where Paddywack would be, up on the bow, like a ship’s figurehead, searching always for new excitements and new adventures. He loved to watch the world drift by, because the world was always changing around him, there was always something new to see or smell or hope for. Sometimes, if the barge came close enough to the bank and Paddywack felt like a run, he’d leap off on to the towpath and go for a sprint. Any unfortunate rabbit or rat caught out in the open, any cat out hunting, was soon sent scurrying away. And with a bit of luck there could even be another dog to play with or race against. Joe loved watching him as he ran circles round every dog he met.