After the long, bleak winter this week's sunshine has given me a boost.

I've been smiling at people and answering phone calls instead of waiting for the Call Minder to kick in.

I've also suddenly found a renewed energy for making my husband get on with things.

My whinging about needing a holiday has prompted him to book us a week in a nice resort in Corsica.

Actually, he didn't need much prompting for this.

He loves any excuse to buy a map and another Rough Guide to go with our burgeoning collection of travel books - many of which have yet to travel further than the coffee table.

We're not going until June, but he's already talking about buying a new sun hat for our three-year-old and wondering whether the flip flops he bought in 1993 will stand another beach battering.

It's never too early for my husband to start preparing for a holiday.

Commendably, the first thing he does is read up about the entire history of a region, if not the whole country, before we set foot on the foreign soil.

And then he likes to educate me.

I'm now familiar with many of the key moments in Corsica's turbulent past.

Next he wants to know about the geology: the contours of the terrain, the likelihood of earthquakes and floods, the annual rainfall, the sort of crops that grow best on the windward side.

He moves onto knowledge about the country's modern economy and its style of government.

He swots up on the names of the political parties, their leaders, any recent coups, the current disputes and potential unrest.

During these weeks, he's also trying to learn the language.

He'll have bought at least two phrase books and a dictionary and will attempt to absorb as much as possible so that when the times comes to speak to the natives, he'll be more or less fluent.

He is, without doubt, a mind-broadening traveller.

And, most of the time, I think it's great that he shows an enormous interest in a place he'll only be staying at for a week or two. But I haven't always found him the easiest of holiday companions.

We once spent five hectic days in Prague trying to keep to an impossible itinerary.

"Can't we just stop for a coffee?" I remember saying after we'd done The Charles Bridge, the Jewish ghetto, several palaces and a boat trip all in one morning.

"But, but." He waved a sheet of paper with only five of his 20 "places of interest" ticked off.

"We haven't done Kafka's house, or Wenceslas Square or that famous jazz place yet. We've got to do them today."

"I need a coffee, " I said pulling open the door of somewhere warm, bright and inviting.

"No, No. Not in THERE," he wailed, pointing up at the giant yellow "M" above the entrance "We haven't come all this way to go into a McDonald's. What were you thinking of?"

"Coffee," I said sheepishly. "And an apple turnover."