At last something is happening in my little corner of Corsica. I have something new to say in my diary! Something new and explosive. I hope you’re going to enjoy the way I tell stories.

So are you ready, my mystery reader?

It all started with a gigantic BOOM. At precisely 2.23 in the morning. I know, because the explosion woke me up and I immediately looked at my watch. I took a look outside, towards the sea, the Revellata Peninsula, Balagne, and its highest peak, the Capu di a Veta. I couldn’t see anything! Then I went back to sleep.

The next morning there was great excitement in the campsite. The police were questioning tourists, who seemed more surprised than panicked, pretending not to notice the big grins on the faces of the local Corsicans.

The hotel complex, the Roc e Mare marina, had been blown up during the night.

To give you the precise geographical details, the Revellata is a small peninsula five kilometres long and one kilometre wide. It is almost entirely wild apart from the lighthouse at the end of the world, the little port of Stareso, two or three white villas, the Euproctes campsite tucked right in the middle, under the olive trees, with direct access along a small path to two tiny beaches: Alga in the south-east and Oscelluccia in the north-east. To the west there’s nothing but the cliff. You can go down a steep slope to the Cave of the Sea-Calves and Recisa Cove, a pebbly inlet inhabited by windsurfers.

To give you some precise economic details, almost all of this little bit of paradise belongs to one man: my grandfather! Cassanu Idrissi. Despite this, he is happy to live with his entire family at Arcanu Farm in the mountains, an isolated spot with just one steep road to get up there, a large television aerial, some old rocks, a huge holm oak in the middle of the farmyard and all the scents of the maquis clinging to the walls. Nothing fussy, no swimming pool, no tennis court. The only luxury is the incredible view of Revellata Bay. Even the campsite belongs to Papé Cassanu. Basile Spinello, the manager, is his friend, and he has one golden rule: no walls, or hardly any, only for the showers and the toilets, bare pitches for tents, a handful of wooden bungalows, just enough to put up the cousins who come over from the mainland each summer, or for friends or a few favoured tourists. Papé Cassanu takes care of his land as if it were a woman he doesn’t want to share, who you can admire but not possess; a woman whose skin will never wrinkle, smelling of rockrose and lemons, painted by the indigo of wild orchids, the ones that Mamy Lisabetta loves.

Except that …