Diary – 1 April 2005

My husband and I have a week’s holiday, and we have told everyone who asks that we are going to Marrakesh. We haven’t bothered booking, of course, because we are disorganised and thus choose to believe the oft-repeated lie that there are these incredible last-minute deals on the internet. I try to buy tickets the night before we are due to depart, and there it is, the incredible last-minute deal: the price of a British Airways return flight to Marrakesh has risen to £900. We fly to Biarritz instead. Biarritz is a chic old lady who was once a rip-roaring good-time girl. The temperature is balmy but at this time of year the beach is deserted. Still, for company we have the ghosts of the rich young ragtime things who once bronzed themselves in the Biarritz sun and blew fortunes in the cool of its splendid casino.

My holiday reading is Until The Final Hour, the journal of Adolf Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge and the basis for the newly released German film Downfall.