Corsica

I stood with Bella in the sunny piazza in Livorno, one noon in May. My wife had gone to buy French francs; the era of the euro had not yet arrived. I noted to the collie that this was a city full of pretty girls . . . but what were we getting into? A couple of Francophile friends, hearing we were bound for Corsica, suggested gently that we should remember that that was the place where they set off bombs.