While Mr F and I were in England recently we drove to the village of Chawton, in Hampshire, to visit the house that was Jane Austen's final (almost) home. I say almost because she actually ended her days in the nearby city of Winchester, to be closer to her doctor. Not that he could do anything for her.

It's ten years at least since I last visited Chawton and I found myself much more touched by the experience this time around. The house is so simple and unaffected, all credit to the Jane Austen Society. OK, the gift shop now has as many DVDs as books, but things could be much worse. They could be selling Jane Austen cookies.

It's not a large house and given the number of nieces and nephews that were regularly dumped there, to be minded by that useful pair of maiden aunts, Jane and her sister Cassandra, it is truly a wonder she was ever able to write anything. I admire her more than I can say. Her books are so exquisitely sharp and she created them under the most dire circumstances. Paper was scarce, privacy even more so, and she had little hope of anything ever seeing the light of publication day. She also died when she was only 41 years old, and when you subtract all the time she must have spent serving tea and scratching her chilblains, her achievements are all the more remarkable.

Every so often I need a reminder of what a charmed life I lead, whining, ungrateful mid-list scribbler that I am. Our little pilgrimage to Chawton did it for me. You have to wonder what more JA could have done with a room of her own and another thirty years of health. And a computer. Imagine if she'd had Microsoft Word.