Returned from France late yesterday evening to find a note from the police to let me know that someone had smashed the driver's window of my locked and alarmed car, legally parked in a 'safe' street. They didn't steal anything but it'll cost me several hundred pounds to fix assuming no collateral damage (not worth losing a no-claims bonus) and ....grrrrrr.

While in France I was chatting to a nomadic writer. He doesn't own a house and survives by house-sitting for friends around Europe and earning enough from his writing to pay for his car, computer and books. Not a bad life. He was telling me how he has just finished The Discovery of France by Graham Robb and that it was so good he was going to read it again straight away. What an endorsement. There are more extraordinarily glowing reviews from the more traditional reviewing media here.

The book (essentially a social history of France since the beginning) is clearly a work of enormous scholarly importance but it fascinates too. I didn't know about the stilted shepherds (and postmen) of Les Landes. They could move over rough land at 8 mph which is significantly faster than the average speed of traffic in London today. How about the Mayor of London introducing incentives for stilt walking?

And I love these lines he quotes from Madame de Genlis's phrasebook for stagecoach travellers:

"The wheels are on fire… I am suffering greatly. I am going to vomit. Give me the vase".

That's how I felt when I got to see my car last night.