PETER MAYLE

Nowadays, if you have a journey, albeit a simple one, you consider yourself lucky if nothing happens.

No matter what their background, the southern French are fascinated by food.

I am a great believer in people taking control of their own lives.

When I was very young in London, I had a bank account, which didn't have a great deal in it. I should think at least every three months the bank manager would call me up and threaten to strangle me because I had no money, and I was writing checks.

It's very nice to meet the people who read my books.

I don't have a boss. Well, I have a boss: the public. If the public doesn't buy my books, I would be out of a job.

The great thing about having money is that you can actually just get on with your life and not have to think about paying the bills or crouch over 'The Wall Street Journal' or the 'Financial Times' and look at the stock figures and things like that. That bores me rigid.

One must never forget that life is unfair. But sometimes, with a bit of luck, this works in your favour.

I was lucky enough to spend some of my school days in Barbados, where my father was working, and this gave me a taste for hot weather.

I have a robust sense of humour which helps me deal with problems.

There is nothing I like better at the end of a hot summer's day than taking a short walk around the garden. You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler night air.

The funny thing in France is that writers are not allowed to retire, because the French government say you are still earning money from books you wrote 20 years ago.

I have a very set routine. I work six days a week, but only half days. I work from 9 in the morning till 1 in the afternoon, without any interruptions, a fair slug.

Sundays in France have a different atmosphere to other days, with fewer phone calls, no postman, no delivery men and no one banging on the door.

I left school at 16 and skipped university to work, initially as a waiter. I think I missed out on what would have been great years.

In the south of France the phones cut in and out, the electricity isn't particularly reliable. I think many people would get very irritated with that life.

Very little happens in my books.

You don't like it when a French housewife gets mad at you. If she gets steam behind her, she is an unstoppable creature.

There are plenty of miserable millionaires all over the place.

I would dearly love to resist the temptation, if you can call it that, to worry. It's boring, it's anti-social, it's unproductive and it's depressing.

Sunglasses must be kept on until an acquaintance is identified at one of the tables, but one must not appear to be looking for company. Instead, the impression should be that one is heading into the cafe to make a phone call to one's titled Italian admirer, when--quelle surprise!--one sees a friend. The sunglasses can then be removed and the hair tossed while one is persuaded to sit down.

I'd rather live precariously in my own office than comfortably in somebody else's.

I have a terrible weakness for collecting snatches of other people's conversations, and occasionally I'm rewarded with unusual fragments of knowledge. My favorite of the day came from a large but shapely woman sitting nearby whom I learned was the owner of a local lingerie shop. 'Beh oui,' she said to her companion, waving her spoon for emphasis, 'il faut du temps pour la corsetterie.' You can't argue with that. I made a mental note not to rush things next time I was shopping for a corset, and leaned back to allow the waiter through with the next course.

Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.

Why not make a daily pleasure out a daily necessity.