Tuscany

I'm cautious about booking holidays. I always look at the brochure pictures for signs of building work. But everything looked pretty good about the Tuscan property we took for a week, and so it proved.

OK, there was no water when we arrived, no toilet rolls, soap, washing up liquid or kitchen rolls. It was as if the god of cleanliness had demanded a particularly thorough sacrifice from the previous tenants.

So we crossed our legs for a while as Guiseppe, the man who looks after the property, got the water running again. We shared a bar of soap and a single toilet roll for a day until we found a shop for more supplies.

But it was a small price to pay for this wonderful place that had everything you could want of a Tuscan holiday: good sized outdoor pool, indoor pool (the sort you play with cues) marvelous views, shady places to eat and bedrooms everywhere - more than enough for our party of 10.

A well-stocked vegetable garden gave us fresh salads and tomatoes every day with eggs from the chickens - all this and just half an hour from Pisa airport. The roads became progressively narrower until we ended up on a dirt track to the driveway. This ensured privacy but it didn't take long - about five minutes drive - to find a great restaurant in the nearby village.

It's not every day that Gill's mum and dad get the chance to be with all their grandchildren so we were chuffed that all our boys and their two cousins could come. The mix of generations worked well and everybody helped out so that Gill wasn't left with all the jobs.

Usually it takes me a full two weeks to wind down but this time it was pretty instant and we all feel rested. I think it helped to leave the computers at home and mobile telephones switched off. I wouldn't normally spend an hour watching an ant drag the carcass of a much bigger fly laboriously over the patio but you can do that kind of thing when time doesn't matter.

We love Florence, but our day there was disappointing, never again in July - too many crowds. Lucca, on the other hand, was something else, what Florence used to be like before the crowds descended.

The only downside was the flying - I don't like the EasyJet scrum for undesignated seats or the airport hassle that makes flying today the very worst kind of transport. Scotland next with a long drive north - but always worth it when we get there.

The Euro in my wallet

I always keep a few Euros in my wallet. I like to have them because, the longer I keep them, the more I can buy with them, unlike my pounds which don't go very far these days, particularly in mainland Europe.

But I don't care because I'm British and want to hold on to my good old pounds because they carry the Queen's head on them. They're all about British sovereignty and if we let the pound go we'll relinquish control of our economy and nationhood will disappear. We shall have opened the floodgates to federalism, the sky will fall in and Britishness will go down the plug hole.

No more beer

There'll be no more Last Night of the Proms, No more state opening of Parliament, No more cricket or red telephone boxes; no more warm beer, Chelsea flower shows or Punch and Judy on the beach.

Instead all we'll have is the nasty, filthy Euro with its superior buying power. Who needs that? What's wrong with spending the Earth on our holiday in Tuscany?

After all, a cheaper pound means that our good old businesses can export more to mainland Europe and that's good for our economy. Those Germans and French must be really struggling with their high valued Euros. What? They're not? What's that? They're more productive than we are? That can't be true.

Cheap land

No, it can't be true that the Eurozone is proving a resilient economic block supporting one of the world's strongest currencies. It can't be true that Ireland's new Euro millionaires are buying up cheap land in East Anglia. What do the Irish know about economics?

Come to think of it, it's a while since I saw any Euro-sceptic articles in the press. Neither have I heard much from our anti-Euro politicians. Could it be that, as they change their money on trips to Brussels at ever more pitiful rates of exchange, some of them might be thinking: "Blimey, I was wrong?"

Not so. Once a Euro-sceptic, always a Euro-sceptic says this man who explains why we did the right thing.

Soviet Union

John Redwood says that the higher prices in mainland Europe mean that we shall turn more to the UK to buy things. He may be right, but we live today in a global economy. Imagine if we lived in a country where you weren't allowed to buy imported goods. It used to be like that in the Soviet Union.

He talks about the strain on peripheral European economies. I don't see much straining in Ireland. The colour of our money should not be a determinant of whether we can provide the goods and services that other people need.

I agree that we shouldn't go abroad for everything. I can see no sense, for example, in the fans of two English clubs - Manchester United and Chelsea - travelling to Moscow to see their teams contest the final of the European Champions Cup.

Set in stone

Ah but the final has to be in Moscow, you may say. It's set in stone, on the fixture list. Why? Why can't there be enough flexibility in the system to buy out the Moscow fixture and transfer it to Wembley?

Imagine the costs of thousands of fans travelling to Moscow when they have the world's best football stadium on their doorstep. But of course, they're spending rather than saving money and spending money, according to the US, is a good thing, unless of course it means you can't afford your mortgage in which case it becomes a bad thing.