Sometimes I puzzle over what it means to be 'interesting' – everyone wants to be interesting – and have reached the conclusion that being interesting is being interested in everything. Darine is like that. She loves photography, travelling and oriental dance. If I'm not having fun doing what I'm doing, she told me, then I move on and do something else. Sounds interesting enough to me.

I have forgotten just about all the French I learned 20 years ago at school but as Darine didn't speak a word of English (or Norwegian) it started to come back to me as we worked. Oh, yeah, Darine smokes like a chimney, she loves chocolate, she's dying to do a movie with Jonny Depp (I may have heard that somewhere before) and thanks to the kind attentions of the villa masseuse, she looks fabulous dressed in grapes.

Petter