'Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a
homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name,
someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or
two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to
drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.'
Suffering from every malady in the book except housemaid's knee, three
men and a dog decide to head for a restful vacation on the Thames.
Anticipating peace and leisure, they encounter, in fact, the joys of
roughing it, of getting their boat stuck in locks, of being towed by
amateurs, of having to eat their own cooking and, of course, of coping
with the glorious English weather.