from ... Monday April 12

We need to travel to Avignon, to collect our leased car. We've booked and paid on-line for our TGV tickets, and have had no trouble collecting them, a couple of days ago, from the Gare de Lyon . Now it remains only to go back there and get on board .

Memory: sitting in the "pas fumeur" waiting-room; it's still cold, and the two one-way doors - entry and exit, and clearly marked as such - are shut. A couple of men appear outside the exit doors, and, refusing to believe they can't enter, start flinging themselves with passion against them. This performance is watched impassively for a while, until someone sitting near the exit doors gets up and silently pushes them open: the men come in without embarrassment and also without thanks. CS and I are laughing scornfully .

We have forgotten one thing . Our travel day is Easter Monday, and the first day of the school holidays.

If the phrase 'crèche in a train' conjures up any unpleasant pictures, they're not true enough. We think most of the fathers in Greater Paris have organised to put their wives and children onto this particular TGV to send them away down south, whilst they themselves remain in town (and busy, of course !). Our first-class seats are no protection at all against the ravages of the 4-child family with pregnant mother, sitting next to us across the aisle; but I must admit we're plain unlucky, as the rest of the mums with their kids are pretty well behaved . Basically, what we've been looking forward to as a peaceful transition between Paris and Heaven (Le Clair de la Plume, the world's best hotel, in Grignan) does not turn out to be such; we're unable to derive the slightest enjoyment from the trip.

Once in Avignon, we're introduced to our car, a Renault Clio that we've leased on-line through a Melbourne company at a very good rate. We've discussed what colour it might be ad nauseam, but have never even thought of this one — black, and we like it a lot (in fact, CS nearly cries on the day we have to leave it, at Genève airport). What we arranged for was a basic model; what we get is a 4-door with everything — lights that come on when you enter a tunnel, windscreen-wipers that start up when rain falls ... you name it, the Clio's got it!

We ask the people at the delivery place how to get out of Avignon (big city !), and they want to know our destination: we say "Grignan", and everyone shrugs. We point to it on a Michelin map - it's about half an hour's drive away - and they're faintly interested but obviously no bells ring; still, they can advise us how to escape Avignon's clutches in terms of needing to drive in that direction. We've found this many a time, in France and in Italy; people live in splendid ignorance of their surrounds, and are never embarrassed at discovering that the place you're enquiring about is within a stone's throw !