On the Road: Constellation Revisited

Here's a little postscript from our road trip. This is the second time we've driven by the Fantasy of Flight, a museum in Florida that never seems to be open when we're there. But I like to make a detour to admire this Constellation - my favourite commercial aircraft and the loveliest ever designed, apart perhaps from Concorde.

There can't be many of them left in the world and this one looks unloved but still undaunted. Once again, it was hard to get a photo through the wire fence but here you can just about see the pretty tail.

This summer I read Adrien Bosc's French novel "Constellation", a mesmerising eulogy of the 1949 Air France flight that crashed in the Azores, carrying a fascinating bunch of passengers including Edith Piaf's boxer lover and violin prodigy Ginette Neveu. The sort of book that only a Frenchman can write.