For a change, we thought we’d go to Italy. We knew someone with a caravan permanently pitched by Lake Garda, so we booked a few nights there. Annie wanted to see an opera at the Torre del Lago Puccini, at the theatre built close to Puccini’s summer palace. We had booked into a stopover in Limousin on the way back. Apart from that, we had no fixed plans. Which was just as well …