✒ We've spent the past week in France – back now – and it was good. We were four adults, including our grown-up offspring, and so I booked a slightly larger car at the airport, a Renault Kangoo. It looks like a garden shed on wheels. You may remember that other French car, the one with the sticking-out bum, which almost nobody bought so far as I can see, but which had the TV ad: "I see you baby, shaking that ass". This from the country that invented the wonderful old Citroen that looked like a drowsy frog and which lifted itself up hydraulically when you turned the key. It was perhaps the most stylish mass production car ever built.

This week we drove the shed round some of the loveliest scenery in France, then spoiled it by parking in front.

✒ We're in an elegiac mood, since the house we're staying in, owned by Pat White, wife of Michael White of the Guardian, is somewhere we've been coming for two decades now. It's an old presbytery – I dread to think what might have happened to some of the young men who came here to be trained for the priesthood – that's both vast and handsome. They've had 19 people sleep here, though we were a maximum of 11 this week. There's a long, rose-infested garden and a swimming pool, and the neighbours invite you to help yourself to their fruit, including apples and ripe, purple figs.

It's very peaceful. The loudest noise is the church bell, and the occasional blare which announces the arrival of the bread van (rather like the Morecambe and Wise sketch in which a police car goes by, siren screaming, and Eric says: "He won't sell much ice-cream going at that speed.") And the occasional yowling of the feral cats.

There is no cafe and no shop, and no tourist bus has ever debouched scores of people here, though they cram into nearby St Cirq Lapopie. To us the place is sleepy afternoons by the pool, expeditions to the nearby market, and long boozy meals under the terrace of vines. When the weather is bad, and up on the limestone causses it can get quite rough, there are huge log fires in the living-room.

Now for various reasons the Whites have to sell, and we may never come here again. As we grow older, we get used to the soft closing of doors that were once always open.

✒ Mike and I drove over to meet an English couple, Sue and Michael Spring, who make their own wine 20 minutes west of Cahors. I had written disobligingly about the black wine of the region, since it is highly tannic and usually sold too early, so that it resembles fruit-flavoured battery acid. The Argentinians have scooped up most of the market by using the same grape – Malbec, or Auxerrois in French – but making it easy to drink almost from the start.

The Springs wanted to set me right, and I must say some of their older vintages were delicious – the 2002 in particular is soft, velvety and with an evanescent perfume. I felt envious. They live in a fine old farmhouse with glorious views, they sell their wine almost entirely to passers-by and, along with Sue's baked goods and jams, at a local market. And they have a dish that lets them receive Radio 4. What more does anyone need? Nor have they written a book about the comical local ouvriers. If you happen to be in that neck of the woods, they are at the Domaine du Garinet, just outside the village of Le Boulvé. Follow the signs, then klaxonner loudly when you get into their yard.

✒ I can also report an improvement in the standard of French middle-range cuisine. Usually round here you get a choice of confit de canard, or else confit de canard, with cassoulet de Toulouse offered only by the more exotic places, every dish accompanied by the small, patronising smile implying that, as a Brit, you are not used to edible food. Now a French-Russian couple who worked in London have opened L'Allée des Vignes in Cajarc, with lots of exciting choices, just like we get at home! And in the tiny village of Bach, at the Auberge Lou Bourdié, Monique Valette serves traditional food in great portions, including tureens full of potage and roast meat in delectable sauces. You can avoid confit de canard on a daily basis.

✒ Thanks for your many emails about the death of our cat. I had said that losing a pet is a particularly private sorrow, but you contradicted me – pet people are clearly delighted to sympathise with each other. Some said how they had mourned a lost moggie for twenty years or more, which seems rather a long time, though I can understand better now how people feel that way. Today we start searching for a kitten.

✒ Paul Torpey was puzzled when he was allowed to sit in first-class on a packed Virgin train north. The snacks were seasonally selected: pumpkin risotto for Hallowe'en, mince pies for Christmas, and for November 9-16, designated "Remembrance", poppyseed cake, which seemed rather inappropriate, he felt. It could have been worse: by the same token, they might have offered opium.

At Disneyland Paris, Seamus Kyle found a Mickey Mouse shower cap in his bathroom, carefully marked, "fits one head."

Howard Taylor bought a packet of magnetic darts, which the paranoid lawyers had labelled, "do not aim at face." And I loved the gift received by Shirley Neish, a rain gauge proudly proclaiming, "for calibrating rainfall … suitable for indoor or outdoor use."

✒ Further to car park and toilet nestling, Ian Pitch and family found themselves on a wide and otherwise deserted beach on the Isles of Scilly. To their astonishment a couple arrived and for some reason selected a spot right next to them. Ian whispered to his son to pick a fight with his sister, which he did, causing much noise and tumult, followed by the departure of the couple. "This event has passed into family legend," he says.