He darts around the dining room, his right eye spasming, pouncing on guests who aren't eating with enough gusto. At breakfast you have to write down what you want for supper and the dull inevitability of the ham omelette and creme caramel makes us cranky. By the time the nun passes, she is apoplectic with rage, leaping up and down on the spot screaming, "God, I hate God!" We are half-board at the hotel and, by dinner, Lisa and I are always half-bored. I had to say, 'Excuse me, I can't find the registry office by myself.' " A sour-faced nun hobbles towards us, weighed down by her habit in the 90-degree heat.

"If he really loved her, he wouldn't make her wear those clothes on such a hot day," muses Lisa. We are on a two-week family holiday in Sardinia - an island populated entirely by glossy-haired beauties whizzing by on Vespas and withered nuns on their way to Vespers. We stare at the coltish girls and try not to look at the nuns "I don't like them," whispers Mum "It's so dopey. Marrying Christ." Dad is racing way ahead of us - he always does - turning now and then to say "keep up" We can't Mum recalls their wedding day "He walked too fast for me then, too. In the restaurant complex below, in a neutral halogen glare, an oblong, windowless truck moved slowly along the pavement, followed by a man in a space suit.