The world from my window

There is only so much miserable weather I can take during our enforced stay in Jura on our Beetle drive to Corfu. Still, if we're here for the Juration , while we wait for the dynamo and regulator to be fitted to the old VW by a Renault garage where they speak very little English, there is always wine, history, natural splendour and food. There's a bit of writing to be done, and catching up on admin. And the good news is that the weather is bad, too, in The Enchanted Village. And then there are always books. And what a diverse collection. I have just read The Curse of Brink's Mat , the inside story of the 20th century's most lucrative armed robbery, and loaned to me by ex-detective Nobby Odd-Job. Then it was over to the charming The  Cat of Portovecchio by my friend, Maria Strani-Potts (highly recommended if you want to immerse yourself in a Corfu fishing village in the 1950s), and I've just downloaded School Ties , a novella by...

So we're in a French gite, right, where we've been licking our wounds for the past four days after car trouble in Jura. We have to wait until Tuesday for a new dynamo to arrive from the UK after the Renault breakdown garage said it was 'impossible' to mend. The man from VW Heritage says otherwise, and we are crossing fingers, arms, legs and toes and anything else we can find. We want to set off for Italy on Wednesday. We will be approximately a week late at our destination, Corfu. When Bella the old Beetle shuddered to a halt, it was as if she'd been saying: ' Enough, for goodness sake. I need to rest my weary springs. Just a short break will be fine, and then I'll be back on my tyres again.' So we checked into the Hotel Charmless, made bearable by the lovely receptionist, who was manning the fort while the owner and cook were away (together? A French tryst maybe?), and her eight-year-old son who was ready for bed in his Spiderman pyjamas. ...