Smile through gritted teeth and say 'cheese'

The Beetle’s trundled more than eighteen hundred miles across Italy and France, with cars and lorries tooting both in frustration (it takes longer to get up north, the slow way) and admiration.

Well, she is rather stunning for a forty-five year old.

We’re pleased to be ensconced in our Brittany Ferries cabin, with Mr Grigg watching Licence to Kill on his laptop and me struggling to work out the code for the free WiFi and children next door who are so excited they’re bouncing off the walls.

If they were mine, I’d put them in the top bunk and then close it.

But as the ferry chugs across the channel through the night, they’ll soon be asleep.

Which is more than can be said for me after a night out in Le Havre. On a bank holiday here in France for the Ascension (and it should be a bank holiday in Blighty too for Oak Apple Day), places to eat after a three-hundred mile journey were in short supply. We ended up in a bar called Au Bureau with disdainful Parisian-style service and a waiter who pocketed the change. Well, it was only a euro, but it’s the principle.

And then supper. It was my fault really. I liked the look of the place. Its theme was Freisian cows and they, as anyone who knows me well will tell you, are my favourite animals. As we walked in, we were hit by an invisible wall that smelled of cheese.

A fondue restaurant.

‘Let’s try it,’ Mr Grigg said. ‘At least it'll be different.’

For someone who likes cooked cheese only marginally more than offal, it was the perfect place for our last supper.

Not.

Still, the service was good. And I reckon I will need a notepad next to the bed tonight in case I wake up and remember any of my dreams. Not just because of eating cheese before going to bed but also because I'll have been listening to James Bond's double entendre in one ear, the bouncing babies next door in the other and have a chapter from Neil Gamain’s The Ocean at the End of The Lane on my mind as my head hits the pillow. Tonight, Matthew, I will be flying.

That’s about it.

Love Maddie x