Fox, chicken, bag of grain

FRANCE: A MATTER OF LOGISTICS A villa holiday 900 miles from home at the other side of the Channel requires planning. Dull stuff but we've worked hard on this:

Provisions are needed for that first evening yet the boot (trunk) is full. Do you stop, buy lots of consumables (inc. bottles) and make life hell over the final 10 km for those in the back seat? Or go straight there, unload and return to the supermarket? General fatigue and enhanced impatience have always discouraged the latter.

We tried a variant. VR and I were dropped at the supermarket where we immediately started to shop. Occasional Speeder, husband Darren and supercargo Zach drove to the villa, unloaded, and OS drove the empty car back.

It worked because VR and I had a list. Previously when the whole group roamed the aisles there'd been far too much impulse-buying. Exotic bits and pieces hanging around into the second week. This time indulgences were confined to a bottle of Grand Marnier, a strange deviation presently turning into a post all on its own.

FRANCE: WHAT TO DO ON HOLIDAY? I brought my titchy Compaq netbook in order to write and revise a new novel. This morning, I got going:

Work at the hospital started at seven-thirty. Jess Embery rose early but not earlier than her mother. As Jess opened the bedroom door the smell of toast rose up the staircase. On the landing, on top of the laundry basket, lay a folded pile of smalls she'd worn over the weekend. Secreted from her bedroom while she slept. Hand-laundered. Jess sighed.

None of these words may survive, only that the mother dotes on the daughter. Working title: Hand Signals, hideously ironic. Penny plain style intentional. A good moment for me. Anything might happen.