I have friends who've taken to email but who never surf the Internet. They seem to feel it's like smoking crack: once you've started you can't stop. Now admittedly, it can turn into a great waste of time, but these are all people who watch TV. So what's the diff? And this morning, in just one hour of surfing, I've completed a deeply satisfying piece of research.

It all started over dinner last evening when I discovered that Mr F once visited Normandy. When you marry in your 50s it can take a long time to get the full case history. Anyway, long before he knew me he went to Normandy and he liked it so much he'd like to go back some day. In particular he told me, he'd like to see the Normandy beaches. Which led us to talk about my father who took part in the D-Day landings.
'Where?' asked Mr F.
'Dunno,' replied this slipshod custodian of family history.
But this morning, armed with my Dad's demobilisation papers and the fragments of what little he ever told me about his war, I filled in a lot of gaps. This is why I love the Internet. I don't care that you sometimes end up neck deep in crap. There's lots of wonderful useful stuff out there, at the click of a mouse.

Between breakfast and lunch I've uncovered much of my Dad's naval career. I now know where he trained for Combined Ops and what it was all leading to - the delivery of Canadian infantry to Juno Beach, where many died, but many more forged on to the liberation of France. My father always planned to go back but didn't live long enough to do it. Of course, now I'd like to visit Normandy too.

Not this week though. This week we go to Provence and my dear blog-locum Carrie Galbraith will keep the airwaves open.

Messages this week from readers who were surprised or relieved to discover that even a published writer gets attacks of the screaming abdabs after finishing a book and submitting to an editor's scrutiny. Oh yes. And any writer who tells you different is a fibber.