ON the face of it, this is a very strange story indeed: about a long-serving member of Huddersfield Choral Society who wrote a book on her boating adventures on English canals.

It's just been published at the other side of the world in New Zealand but she's still looking for a publisher over here, where the action all happened.

But, then the history of Doris Coppell is very involved.

The book Kiwi Afloat begins in 1970 after Doris, who was born in New Zealand in 1923 and today is 82, had married her second husband Alexander Coppell, a Lancastrian, and was living in Bradley Road, Bradley.

They discovered a common interest in boats and bought the Salidha, a 30ft clinker-built converted ship's lifeboat, at Apperley Bridge on the Leeds to Liverpool canal.

The Salidha's adventures - beginning with the heartbreak of finding her at the bottom of the canal after all the graft of getting her ready - are just the start of Doris's no-holds barred, often humorous, account of life on the inland waterways.

By 1972-73 the Salidha's broad beam was a serious handicap to plans for further exploration via the narrow canals.

The obvious solution was to get a narrow boat and so they sold the Salidha and bought the 30ft ex-hire narrowboat Drayton Duke at Market Drayton and promptly renamed her the Maori.

At one stage the obsession with boats saw them become a two-boat family after the grandiose decision to buy the 57ft coal barge William Hennell with plans to turn it into a super cruiser via lots of hard work.

Apparently one local press photographer put himself at risk by turning up at Cooper Bridge after one particularly heavy spell and asking Doris to "look as if I was doing something".

When Doris and Alec separated in 1976 the agreement was that they would share ownership of the boat!

And indeed Doris continued canalling until she returned to New Zealand years later in 1990.

But before then she had leased a canalside property, Calder House at Shepley Bridge, Mirfield, from British Waterways and maintained her own narrow boat, Penelope.

Today the former pupil at Auckland Girls Grammar School is back on Auckland's North Shore, not far from where, as the young Doris Capper, she first experienced the joys of sailing at Wautemata Harbour.

Her first job was on the Auckland Star newspaper before she left to become a Wren and subsequently married Colin Evans, a sailor on the British destroyer HMS Wessex which called in New Zealand.

Doris came to live in Nottinghamshire after the war and continued music studies that she had begun a school and was awarded degrees by both the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity College, London.

Colin died in 1957 and 10 years later she married Alexander and moved to Huddersfield in 1968.

Doris was a part-time music teacher at Dryclough Junior School, Crosland Moor, from 1969 to 1971 and from 1971 onwards taught piano at Huddersfield Polytechnic and Huddersfield Technical College.

She became a member of Huddersfield Glee and Madrigal Society and went on to spend "21 glorious years" with Huddersfield Choral Society, which only ended with her return Down Under. She is still an associate member.

In 1976 she was awarded the Huddersfield Light Operatic Society Trophy at the Mrs Sunderland competition.

It was in 1974 that she started taking the notes which are the basis of the book, which was launched in February at the Puhoi Hotel, north of Auckland.

* Kiwi Afloat by Doris Coppell, can be ordered via the website, www.shopnewzealand.co.nz at £12.95 (subject to currency fluctuations).