The world from my window

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. ...

Well, the village wedding has been and gone and we all have the warm glow that follows a lovely bank holiday weekend. My friend Pelly's Number One Daughter was married to her soulmate in the wonderful setting of Forde Abbey, which nestles inside the Dorset border, with just a nod to neighbouring Somerset for its postal address. There were gasps when the bride walked in with her father to a score composed by the Cinematic Orchestra , as the huge log fire blazed in the great hall. A Jane Austen heroine, she took the arm of her husband-to-be, who in the film would have been played by a young Hugh Grant or maybe Dominic Cooper. There was even a distinguished wedding guest in a kilt. And the assembled throng sniggered when the registrar asked the bridegroom to repeat the words: 'I Timothy St John Dauphinois Sutherland...' The guests gathered below the abbot's lodgings and tower (built by the last abbot, Thomas Chard, in the early 1500s) for a group photo as the female photog...