Having put my best foot forward on Sunday and marched Amelie into town with the sole purpose of trying on shoes, I forgot to mention the outcome. Obviously the little ankle-biter was in a difficult mood, but I managed to put my foot down and force her to toe the line, and the result was that we rebooted her with these...


They cost thirty quid, but fortunately I'm well-heeled.

Clarks call them 'Alana Fay Inf' (so I'm hoping the 'Inf' isn't short for 'Inferior') and they feature flowers, butterflies and love hearts. So I don't think they do them for boys. It's one of the few shoes they stock with an 'H' width fitting for children with elephant feet. But more importantly for a girl who loves sausages, they're lined with pigskin. As is most of her food.

And if you're wondering what they look like on, then wonder no more...


Well, maybe wonder a bit more. I don't think she wants to be seen wearing them in public.

Sunday may not have been easy, but sometimes there's only one thing you can do...


And if you're wondering what that looks like...

Lake Garda & Venice, Italy


Driving in Italy is like driving in Texas. Not only do people overtake on both sides, refuse to use their indicators, and drive bumper to bumper, but all the truck drivers also honk their horns at females driving convertibles.

Horn honking aside, after leaving the thunderstorms in Verazze, I headed to Lake Garda to see what I'd missed as a result of my diversion...


The answer was not a lot. Many people had told me I must see Lake Garda, but (and I may be a lake snob here) I was very disappointed. It was full of tourist attractions and adventure parks, and too packed with people to make it beautiful. Admittedly, the clouds didn’t help the mountains shine through, but... well, give me Lake Tahoe or Crater Lake any day.

So after putting a brave face on the situation...


... I headed on to Venice. And Venice is as beautiful as everyone says it is. At least in the quiet, non-touristy parts of the city. In the famous bits (like St Mark’s square) it looks like all humans and pigeons are fighting for a place to take a picture...


And obviously I was one of them. Meanwhile, some of the gondola rides on the Grande Canale looked more like bumper boats, rather than relaxing or romantic trips along the river.


But the backstreets and the bits where the maps and tourist books don’t tell you to go are very beautiful.


After a few hours of walking, I enjoyed some sunbathing, before deciding I was Veniced out and it was time to head back to pick up my car. That was at 2:30pm. I didn't escape Venice until 5pm. It took me 2.5 hours to walk back to where I had begun my sightseeing.


Admittedly if I had followed the signs (and not stopped for photos), I probably could have found it a lot quicker, but after many human traffic jams, I eventually decided to take my own route back. Which would have been fine if all the streets and canals were on my map. Which they weren't. So instead, I started following the sun. Which also would have been fine if I hadn't ended up surrounded by tall buildings and unable to see it.


Anyway, I eventually escaped Italy and headed to Slovenia. Unusually, I had done some research, and discovered that I needed to pay a 15 Euro road tax entry. But as I came up to the border, there was a huge queue which seemed to consist of just lorries. So I followed the car queue. Which turned out not to be a queue, but just a lot of cars driving straight into Slovenia.

As I continued following them, I noticed they all had 'SLO' (for Slovenia, not Slow) on their number plates, and had a horrible feeling that I should have joined the lorry queue. I seriously regretted not including the Slovenian language as part of my research, and started to wonder what Slovenian jails were like...

Having spent the day here on Saturday, Marie informed us that Amelie was "a delight" and "a little gem", that it was "pure joy to be around her", and that after just a few hours in the girl's company, she felt both "happy and chilled".

Well frankly she should have been here yesterday. Amelie's behaviour was certainly chilling, but in an entirely different way.

With the sun shining and the seagulls singing, we decided to go out on another Gardner Family Fun Day. They're always a complete success. To this day, I still enjoy looking at photos of the last one. Mainly to remind myself how much worse things could be.

Amelie's been invited to a social function at the end of this month, and the only shoes we can currently heave onto her lion-paw feet are tatty, grubby and permanently soaked with rainwater. They've also been baked in the oven by my Mum, which probably hasn't done them any good. So we decided to take her into town for a new pair.

The trip started well, with Amelie running down the hill towards the bus stop at breakneck speed, and refusing to have her hand held. It's actually a sensible tactic. By running both fast and erratically, she makes it difficult for cars to hit her. Once at the bus stop, she decided to pass the time by rolling around on the pavement in the dirt, possibly in an attempt to recreate her back-breaking work of last Wednesday.

All of that was mildly trying, but things soon intensified on the bus, when Amelie insisted on having a seat to herself, meaning that Lisa had to sit on her own, further down the bus. It was like the Rosa Parks incident all over again. We then rode all the way into town with Amelie trying to press the button to make us stop at every stop.

Once at Churchill Square, she continued her tactic of screaming the moment either of us tried to hold her hand, and ran through the shopping centre laughing maniacally whilst bumping into anyone who came near her. In Clarks, she attempted to jump the queue by shouting "Ammy try shoes on!" repeatedly and in a loud voice, until people got out of her way. Then she ran into Next, picked up two cuddly dogs from the children's department, saw a girl with a rabbit, and proceeded to run through the shop with a dog in each hand, shouting "Ammy want a rabbit!".

To be honest, I've had more relaxing shopping trips. By the time she started crawling on all-fours up Dyke Road with a handful of gutter scrapings, we'd had enough, and decided to cut short our fun day and head home. We were only out for an hour and a half. It felt like a lifetime. I'm applying for Supernanny as we speak.

Mountain Passes & Lugano, Switzerland / Italian Riviera


My trip from Wengen to Lugano was interesting. I could have taken a fairly tame mountain pass, but keen to push my car to the limit, I decided to take one which I had heard provided amazing views (and I think was featured on Top Gear)...


I climbed from 1,000ft to 7,500 in a very short space of time, which would have been enjoyable, had it not been rainy and cloudy, and the engine warning light hadn’t appeared on my car. When I got to the top, I breathed a sigh of relief.


Until I saw the route down...


There were places where the road (if you can call it that) had only enough room for one car, and there were no crash barriers. Admittedly, I gained a lot of experience of such driving conditions during my epic adventures in the US, but over there, the only life I ever came across was of the wild variety. In Switzerland things are very different. There were all sorts of people taking the same route, so the likelihood of having to reverse back up the mountain pass was quite high.

I survived the first bit, and paused to admire the view...


... at which point I drove straight into cloud. With visibility less than two metres, and the knowledge that there was a sheer drop on one side of me, and cars on the other (and behind), this mountain pass experience gets ten out of ten for scariness. And yes, I did regret not taking the tamer route.

Anyway, back down on earth, I headed to Lake Lugano for some sun, rest and recuperation....


It was a beautiful place, but alas the sunbathing I'd planned to do was a little difficult with the near continuous downpour.


So I consoled myself by shopping, and planning a road-trip diversion to find some sun.

After using my meteorological skills to analyse the weather, I realised that if I continued on my original route, I would have a permanent rain cloud over me for the next week. So a diversion was required so that I could get behind the east moving front. And what better way to find some warmth and sunshine than with a seven hour diversion to Varazze in Italy...


As I went through the Italian border, there were two long queues for Italian citizens, but no queue for the 'foreign passports'. As I entered, there was no one on guard, so I felt obliged to stop my car and get out and find someone. The guy looked at me, I waved my passport around, he didn’t look at it, but asked another guy who said 'let her through'. They're obviously trying to keep the Italians out and replace them with foreigners.

The next day, I enjoyed a happy morning of sunshine...


... until the thunder and lightning started at lunchtime. I clearly need to read my met books again.

After a few years of photos with your troublemaking classmates...



... September comes, and it's time to move up to Big School...


They have a much better library there. And Lisa doesn't have to wear purple.

Yes, just six weeks (and five nervous breakdowns) after moving in, we've finally started to let people view our new flat. That's not to say we haven't had any visitors so far. The neighbours are very fond of popping round to accuse us of drilling in the middle of the night (I must tell Amelie to stop that), but this is the first time we've had a face at the front door that we wanted to see there. And who didn't want us evicted.

So with great pleasure, we welcomed our old (well, young) friend Marie back to Brighton yesterday for a play-date with Amelie. It's five months since she was last here, and in that time, Amelie's gone from a toddling bundle of sweetness, to a half-crazed megalomaniacal genius with a snacking obsession. So we need all the help we can get. Frankly we could do with Marie here every weekend.

As luck would have it, Auntie Melee came armed with gingerbread men and Smarties. And as my luck would have it, I didn't get to eat either of them. Instead, Amelie spent half an hour trying to stick the Smarties to the biscuits with icing, before giving up and eating the evidence.

In return, I presented Marie with a birthday card and a box of Brighton-themed notelets. It was her birthday in early July, so technically that counts as a Christmas gift too. I also presented her with a cat keyring that looks like Chloe. She claimed to have lost that within half an hour. I can't think why.

So with gifts exchanged, and Lisa keen to be shot of Amelie, Marie and I took the Amster for a brisk run down to the Marina. We decided not to use her toddler reins, and instead let her run free across zebra crossings where the cars don't stop, as the inclement whether got steadily worse. Frankly it was a case of never reins but it pours. By the time we got to the discount bookshop at the marina, we were wetter than the puddles Amelie insisted on jumping in.

But our mission to buy educational learning books was a complete success. Here's Amelie running out of the shop with a bag of balls and plastic ducks...


That's the Brighton 'Walk of Fame' at the end. I think she's reserving a plot.

Anyhoo, in addition to all the junk that Amelie chose, Marie was kind enough to buy her enough books to keep her going through the long winter months. That's if she can tear herself away from her Stuart Little DVDs. We then walked home (occasionally backwards) in the rain, pausing just once for Marie to attempt a shadow puppet of a dog while Amelie picked some poisonous berries...


Back home, Lisa and I set about preparing dinner. Marie's currently on a carb-free diet, so being very mindful of that, we presented her with a hearty meal of pasta and garlic bread, followed by cheesecake with waffles. I'd hoped she might turn it down and leave more for me, but sadly she's far too polite.

We then relaxed for an hour, discussed life, love and working conditions, before sending Marie out into the night with strict instructions not to talk to the neighbours. It was a lovely day, but even better is that I found Marie's cat keyring on the bedroom floor this morning. I'll be giving her that for Easter.

Lake Geneva and Wengen, Switzerland


The last time I visited Switzerland (20 years ago) I got into trouble for accidentally letting an ice cream wrapper blow away from me. So, to enter their country, I figured there would be a lot of rules about cleanliness, and they would be keenly checking all my car documents as well as every item of ID I had on me. But it was the complete opposite - I had to give them 40 Swiss Francs and they let me through without even checking my passport (why does that sound dodgy?).

But I like driving in Switzerland - the roads are well maintained and clean (not an ice cream wrapper in sight), so what better place for me to stay whilst on a road trip, than a car-free mountain resort at 4,000 feet...


Wengen was the place, and following my instructions, I had to get to Lauterbrunnan to dump my car and catch a small train.

However, having not seen a chateau for a couple of days, I felt it was time one featured on my journey, so I made a detour via this specimen on Lake Geneva en route to the place of no cars...


Back to the journey, my GPS found Lauterbrunnan (but then it was also able to direct me to Wengen, which is odd) but it told me I had to catch a ferry for the last five miles. As this is a place in the mountains, I checked out my guide book. It told me that the quickest way was to put my car on a train to Lauterbrunnan. As the book was last updated in May 2010, I decided to follow its advice.

So off to the mountains I went, as I followed the guide book's instructions. After driving through mountains and valleys, I arrived at the car train place (fortunately, the pictures of cars on trains provided guidance). My German is non-existent, but by pointing to my guide book and Lauterbrunnan, the woman then directed me back to names of places I recognised from the GPS instructions. The GPS was right for once. Worried I would now miss the last real train, I sped through the mountains and valleys, pausing momentarily at Interlaken (the area's answer to Lake Geneva)...


... before continuing for another couple of hours. I found the train just before dark, ditched the car and headed up to Wengen.


Wengen was indeed very beautiful and I awoke early the next morning to go hiking and visit a monument to Felix Mendelssohn. I had to compose myself when I found out he died at the age of 38.

My early start was just as well because by 10am, Wengen was covered in cloud. So having waved goodbye to Mendelssohn, I orchestrated a cable car ride up another 7,000 feet in an attempt to find sun. It kind of worked, until the cloud caught up with me...


I gave up, left Wengen and descended to 1,000ft to escape the white fluffy stuff.

Sunday morning saw P1 and I fighting over the paracetemol. But for different reasons. With pills popped, we then set off on a long, but sunny drive to Lyon...


As P1 said, you can tell we must be running out of things to say, when I turned to him about midway and asked him to name his five favourite nuts. I would challenge anyone who mocks that question, as it's not as easy as it sounds. About an hour of nut related discussion followed before we were both able to identify our top five. For the record, mine are (in order of nice nuttiness): Macademia, Pistachio, Cashew, Brazil and Almond. P1's are: Coconut (that created a lot of discussion - can it be classed as a nut?), Pistachio, Almond, Brazil and Pistachio (don't ask).


By the time we got to Lyon, I don't think either of us were in the party mood (again, for different reasons) so our last night on the town consisted of a quiet snack in a café, some liquid throat medication, and a very early night...


On Monday morning we bid each other a fond farewell. P1 headed to the airport to fly home and I set off on my merry way to Switzerland.

However, having become a connoisseur of French driving and French supermarkets, I decided that before leaving French soil, I should do a bit of shopping. Unfortunately every French person in Lyon seemed to have the same idea. After driving down a street on the wrong side of the road, and not realising until I almost played bumper cars with a Renault, I found the supermarket and proceeded to drive around the car park ten times before finding a space. It was a horrible experience, and my most important purchase (paracetamol for the French bug) wasn't even on sale.

So I finally escaped to the mountains. Unlike French, in which I'm virtually fluent, I don't know any German, so I decided I needed to get some pills before crossing the border. It's important to motivate yourself for such an endeavour, so as I entered a garage, I opened the door onto my foot and watched as half of my big toenail got stuck to the door. It gave me a renewed determination to find painkillers.

Which, naturally, they didn't stock. Apparently Le Pharmacie is the only place to find such items. Fortunately, the first aid kit I'd packed managed to stem the flow of blood from my foot, after which I decided I should leave France quickly while I could still drive.

As it turned out, P1 had been even less successful in his attempts to leave the country. With French air traffic controllers on strike, his plane was stuck on the tarmac for hours, and he arrived at Gatwick at 2am, where he had to sleep for three hours before catching the first train home to get back in time for work that morning. Suddenly, an injured toe didn't seem so bad.

Well the good news is that after 48 hours of rest and regular painkillers, Lisa's finally showing a bit of backbone and is no longer taking her injury lying down. Although I think an aerobics class might still be out of the question. So now that I'm no longer required to be a spineless jelly-fist by rubbing ibuprofen into her back, I can return to an incident which happened to me on Tuesday.

I spent the day working at Horsham Hospital, which for me means taking the scenic route up the A281 through Cowfold, a charming little village which used to be a load of bullocks. Further up the road however, a lady driver pulled out of the B2110 turning near Lower Beeding, and I proceeded to follow her all the way to Horsham. Which would have been fine if her car had been capable of topping 30mph. Unfortunately, the beeding woman seemed incapable of finding the accelerator, and I crawled the last four miles into town at a snail's pace. That's if snails can do thirty in a 60mph limit.

Anyhoo, I thought nothing of it at the time (actually that's not strictly true - I thought quite a lot of things, but none of them are repeatable), and the lady and I parted company near Horsham station, where I turned left at the roundabout and she carried straight on.

Eight hours later, however, I saw the last of my patients, plodded back to my car, drove along the road to the roundabout by the station, and who should pull out directly in front of me, but the exact same woman in her speed-restricted car. I then proceeded to follow her like some kind of funeral procession on a low speed car chase all the way back down the A281 to Lower Beeding.

Bearing in mind the amount of traffic in a big town like Horsham during the weekday rush hours, the chances of me ending up directly behind the same car in both directions must be astronomical. A few seconds earlier or later and we'd have missed each other. It can't even be that we work the same hours - I just happened to finish seeing my last patient at that particular time. Any other day and it would have been different.

My first thought was that she was some kind of stalker, but to be honest, the fact that I was following her seems to rule that one out. Although she did keep a close eye on me in her rear view mirror. I'd like to think she might have been panicked by the synchronicity of my presence, but if she was, it didn't make her drive any faster.

What I really need is some kind of mathematical genius (or idiot savant) who can calculate the odds of that incident occurring naturally. Unfortunately the only person I know who fits that description is currently driving through Europe with a sore throat. So I decided to have a go myself.

I started by checking the Horsham page on Wikipedia to find out how many people drive into the town on an average weekday. And to be honest, that's pretty much where I finished. The page doesn't contain that kind of information, although I did discover that "there are no official homeless people living in Horsham". It's the only place in Britain where the Big Issue seller is a newsagent.

Interestingly, however, under 'Notable Living Residents', it lists "Roy Whiting - Convicted child killer of 7 year old Sarah Payne". Which is surprising news. I'd assumed he'd be in prison somewhere. I hope he hasn't bought himself a wig and started cruising the streets at low speed. I could be dead by Monday.

After a morning of sunbathing for P1 and sleeping in a dark room for me (that shows how ill I was), we had a quick photo shoot on La Terrasse...


...before setting off on our mammoth journey for the wedding.

What I find incredible is that in our four journeys to Payrac, we found four different routes. The wedding was lovely - a civil ceremony, followed by a blessing in the church - after which we headed off to a villa for the reception. The villa is the retirement home of the mother of the bride and definitely beats St Leonards-on-sea...


They've got two satellite dishes, which is one more than my parents.

A few hours of socialising, with P1 and I continually saying what a small world it is after meeting people we vaguely knew (or who knew people we knew), complete with eating, toasting, napping in the car (that was me about midnight) and much dancing, and it all added up to a most fabulous day.


I felt a little bit of a fraud when asked whether I was on the bride or groom's side, but having met the bride twice and the groom only once, I figured I should say 'bride'. Fortunately no one asked me her name.

For me, however, the highlight of the day was the drive home. Despite having prepared myself for a lack of dangerous animals on this trip, I've felt a little lost and lonely without any encounters with wild bears, crocodiles, great white sharks, killer whales or kangaroos. But about 10 miles from Payrac, as we were driving along one of our farm tracks, I had to do an emergency stop for... wait for it... not just one, but FOUR wild boars crossing the road...


Sorry, that's a photo fom the wedding. I didn't get a shot of the boars.

It might not have been as impressive as the bear in Alaska incident, but it was an achievement for me. It's the first time I haven't run something over.

Meyronne, Dordogne


We were both pleasantly surprised by the 11th Century Chateau which I had booked for our Payrac wedding. (Not the wedding of P1 and myself, but the wedding we'd been invited to). La Terrasse in Meyronne was beautiful and was a far cry from our previous chateau experience. Although they both had a swimming pool...


I think it helped that we didn't have cobwebs in our room and didn't have to climb the stairs in darkness, past watching eyes from the pictures on the walls.

Both P1 and I would recommend staying at La Terrasse to anyone...


That is, to anyone who is not staying there for a wedding in Payrac. The Hotels.com website described La Terrasse as only 8 miles from Payrac, so we figured that would be a 15 minute, 20 Euro taxi ride at most. As it turned out, 45 minutes and probably a 2000 Euro taxi fare was closer.

Fortunately, we discovered this early as P1 had arranged a rendezvous with a couple of fellow wedding guests the night before the nuptials. They were staying at a campsite less than a mile from the church, so we dressed down for the occasion and gloated to ourselves as we set off from our lovely Chateau and grounds with views like this...


... to visit their tent in a field.

40 minutes and 20 miles of driving across snake-like roads and gravel farm tracks, we made it to Payrac. I discovered that if I were a crow that flew, it would indeed be only 8 miles. But alas, I'm not (yes, I did consider hiring a Cessna). We found out that most of the wedding guests were staying at the campsite. We also found out that a 5 minute taxi ride costs 50 Euros, so P1 quickly went off to investigate the cost of hiring a static caravan for the night. We both soon realised that we could probably buy the campsite (including the caravans) for the cost of our return taxi fare to the wedding the next day.

But as luck would have it, on the day of the wedding, I got struck down by a French throat bug (or possibly P1 poisoned me), so I had no interest in alcohol and was keen to have a car near me for napping purposes. I happily volunteered to be the chauffeur for the day...