Here’s a holiday screen offer you simply can’t refuse - Fiona Duff

Marlon Brando as the original Godfather

This week I am in Italy (get that, globe-trotting me!) but unfortunately for the past few days the weather in East Lothian has been better than that in Tuscany.

So it goes. For all the predictions of a mini-heatwave, there have been some stupendous thunderstorms and near biblical rain.

That’s not to say that I have bared my lily white Scottish legs to the sun when it does come out.

It’s important to get as much vitamin D as possible – they say it is the one supplement that those of us north of the Border should consider taking on a daily basis.

Still, it could have been worse. My husband and I could have been holed up in a little flat just counting how many ants are climbing up the wall.

As it is we have been in good company, a roofed terrace means that we could play cards outside and in the evenings we have discovered The Offer, to which we are fast becoming addicted.

This series is the story of how The Godfather was made. I can’t imagine making a film is ever particularly easy but when you have the notoriously difficult Marlon Brando, a studio head who hates Al Pacino and daily dealings with the Mafia it certainly wasn’t a piece of cake.

But if you are sitting inside on a rainy evening I thoroughly recommend watching it.

With my trusty Kindle in my handbag, I find that being away gives me ample chance to devour some books.

I returned to one called Trespasses, set in Belfast during the Troubles; it was on the last list for the book group which I attend.

I think I must have been in a bad mood when I started it - the lack of quotation marks really annoyed me and I quickly gave up.

The other members were appalled and all agreed it was a fabulous book, really reflecting what life was like in those times.After finishing I had to take to our WhatsApp group and admit that I had made a mistake.

I guess you shouldn’t always judge a book by its first chapter.