Corsican escape

For years I spent my summers here in my elegant farmhouse watering tomatoes, weeding my zucchinis, making apricots flans, entertaining Sunday guests and ferrying intercontinental friends to chic exhibitions in Venice and Verona.

Then I went camp.

I mean, yes I did a stint in Berlin with some gay pals who do feature in one of my short stories and yes I did do a lot of kinky clubs as an observer... But then my friend's dog I used to dogsit died and it was suggested I join the clan of friends, exes, somewhat cousins and live dogs, for their annual camping trip to Corsica.

I did last year. And I did again this year.

The island is so beautiful. I think I should set a novel there, or it seems suited to a steamy novella perhaps. I could rent a room in a village in the hills set back from the sea, with stone paths and iron ballustrades and keening churches with scrolled white facades. I could swim early in the mornings, hike home to my shadowed room, work at length without internet, without kids, until pastis at midday.

Then, after lunch and coffee at the bar or the lady's downstairs, I could go back to my room, recharged, and as the afternoon sun moved about in boxes I could continue on, undisturbed, sentence after sentence, scene after scene.

Oh, dream on!

But I do. The evenings in the bar with its semi-circular terrace over the outstretched bay, which you wouldn't have to visit, except briefly to the shops or the pretty markets, or - dread! - to check your mail. Or yes, to meet friends passing through and urging to join a hike through the arid mountainous centre or a visit to a special pebbly beach - no way but thanks! And then hurry back.

It would be so good.

This summer the sea has been tickling my fancies. First in Cornwall with its cawing seagulls and green coasts and me nearly tripping over a pirate in the street. And then in Corsica with her fiery interior and scorched shores, tinkering jade water up my torso.

Maybe next summer. A Room of My Own? Instead of a sandy tent and fifteen Italians at lunch, buckets of rosé and a tub of washing up??

I am so tempted.