Driving over lemons : an optimist in Andalucâia

Meet Chris Stewart, the eternal optimist.At age 17 Chris retired as the drummer of Genesis and launched a career as a sheep shearer and travel writer.

He has no regrets about this. Had he become a big-time rock star he might never have moved with his wife Ana to a remote mountain farm in Andalucia.

Nor forged the friendship of a lifetime with his resourceful peasant neighbour Domingo ... nor watched his baby daughter Chloe grow and thrive there ... nor written this book.Fate does sometimes seem to know what it's up to."Driving Over Lemons" is a book book that makes running a peasant farm in Spain seem like a distinctly good move.

Chris transports us to Las Alpujarras, an oddball region south of Granada, and into a series of misadventures with an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats.

The hero of the piece, however, is the farm that he and Ana bought, El Valero - a patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, sited on the wrong side of a river, and with no access road, water supply or electricity.