The Dewsbury Desperadoes are on their way to Pontefract for a gig at the Allied Butchers & Architects Club. The girl with the chestnut eyes is on her way to somewhere. And Raymond is heading for Gulag Grimsby.
Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. His dad left home after falling in love with a five-string banjo; his fun-hating grandma believes she should have married Jean-Paul Sartre. Felonious Uncle Jason and appalling Aunty Paula are lusting after the satellite dish; frogs are flattened on Failsworth Boulevard; and sickening Sonia's being sick in the majestic cathedral of words.
Raymond Marks is a normal boy. Until, on the banks of the Rochdale Canal, the flytrapping craze begins and, for Raymond and his Mam, nothing is ever quite so normal again.