When a hastily planned skiing weekend in the French Pyrenees comes to a premature end only half an hour in, Tony Hawks doesn't follow the traditional path left open to non skiers - instead he opts to forgo sight seeing or souvenir buying in the hope of buying a house! The reason for the aborted skiing trip - Kevin, seemed a little perplexed by the idea, not least because the sprained ankle that was stopping him hitting the slopes was inwardly groaning at the thought of traipsing around countless estate agents who would surely usher them through countless homes - Kevin seemed intent on enjoying an extended dose of après ski while resting his damaged joint. Unluckily for him Tony was having none of it, he had decided he was going to buy a house in the Pyrenees and by god that was exactly what he intended to do!

But why did he want a house abroad? Well, ever since his early efforts on the piano as a teenager Hawks had always dreamt of owning a little home in the middle of nowhere and installing a piano in it. There he could practice to his hearts content surrounded by the clean air and idyllic surroundings he thought necessary to inspire the best from him. Of course this being Tony Hawks he didn't go about things the easy way - having purchased a house he decided it would be more of an ethereal experience to transport the piano from London himself. What follows can best be described as a catalogue of comical incidents reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy film as Hawks and friends set about hiring a van, loading it with a heavy piano and transporting it many hundreds of miles across two countries. And when finally installed in the Pyrenees things get little better, as our intrepid wannabe explorer struggles with the language, the customs and the intricacies of a small French town. And then there are the cows!

As an author Tony Hawks has one major flaw as far as I am concerned - he doesn't write nearly enough books! Piano in the Pyrenees is his fourth tome having traipsed around Ireland with a fridge, taught the Moldavians all he knows about tennis and tried to top the hit parade in Algeria. Each of these books was a wonderful insight into life in foreign climes and PITP follows this in Hawk's unique, self deprecating and hilarious way. Here we have a man who forgoes the tradition ways and protocol of buying a house abroad in favour of the "jump in with both feet" approach. Luckily for him he seems to land on those two feet time and again, whether this is just extraordinary luck or fate it's hard to tell but it does make for exciting and amusing reading. Troubles with the local dialect lead to more than one embarrassing situation, as does the inability for our hero to adapt from the pace of life in London to the lack of urgency in the Pyrenees.

The overriding feeling I got though when reading PITP was the shear determination of the author to have a good time and enjoy the ride along the way. There was honesty - albeit brutal at times - in relation to the trials and tribulations he came up against, and he did his best to ride them out in his typically British way. Having turned the last page of the book I was left with a smile on my face and the feeling that this was a good, fun, life affirming romp which outlined everything that is good about decent humorous writing. PITP is never going to be the toughest read you will come up against but it does deliver 300 odd pages of entertainment - few books lead me to quote the oft used phrase "I couldn't put it down" - but PITP was just such a book which gets the full five stars from me.