The car-hire company has made us an offer we can’t refuse

I’m heading to Sicily in July with my pal Holly. Flights, booked. Hotels and Airbnbs, booked. Car hire, £1,000 for the week. And this was the very smallest car available – a car the size of a tuk-tuk; a car so small that we will probably have to strap the luggage, and potentially one of us, to the roof. Inevitably, the pandemic and globalsupply problems are the problem, causing the price of car hire to double since the summer of 2019. And that price is before you even get into the row about the mysterious extra insurance they always insist on. At this rate, Holly and I are going to have to walk around the island, clothes in a bundle on our back, Dick Whittington-style (perfectly safe, hardly any mafia, right?). If you spot a couple of bedraggled women hitch-hiking to Palermo in July, do give us a lift. We’ll brush our teeth so we don’t smell of limoncello.