It was very easy to get out of the city, and I enjoyed country walks with M. Helly and Mirette in the beautiful evenings with the sunset colouring the surrounding mountains. I went on one bus tour visiting surrounding villages, all in beautiful country, but I was astonished to learn that some villages had no sanitary facilities - to relieve ourselves we retired behind haystacks! In the evenings I often played bridge with Joan and the family she was staying with in an apartment on the floor above the Hellys.

A highlight of my stay was Pompom's wedding. Beforehand I walked with Mirette round the city while she delivered invitations to their friends. Pompom made a lovely bride in white, with her erect carriage, but I was disappointed in her four sisters as bridesmaids: they held themselves droopingly and were dressed in dreary bottle-green dresses with brown kid gloves. The service in the Roman Catholic church was followed by a sumptuous lunch at a hotel, and afterwards Emmanuel took his cousin Mad�e from Chamonix and me to another hotel to have a cocktail to round off the day. I wore a pretty pale blue floral ankle-length, short-sleeved dress.

I suddenly realised how close we were to the Swiss border, and so arranged to spend the Easter weekend in Lausanne, where Leda Wessels was at finishing school. She arranged accommodation for me, I went by train, and spent a happy couple of days with her, with a boat trip on the lake, and a walk past Les Fougeres where Mother had spent a happy year at finishing school. As a South African, I thought it was delightful to be able to nip across a border into another country so easily.

On my return from Switzerland I was astonished to find that the University semester had ended, and I never did re-enrol. It seemed to be too much of an effort to do so for the few remaining weeks. I found I could still occupy my time - I walked a good deal each day as I didn�t tell the Hellys that I had no classes to attend, and I wandered into patisseries and fed myself on �clairs and pastries. The result was that I put on an astonishing amount of weight, and could only just squeeze into my clothes. The day I left, Marie-Louise asked me to choose the meal, which was a rabbit casserole and a chestnut cream pudding which I particularly liked. (Certainly no endives whicb I detested and which had appeared as a course all too frequently!)

I did get a lot out of my stay in France, but all the time I had this ache about Jim. Also I was very homesick, and really felt I lived for the weekly (surface) mail from South Africa. I received up to 35 letters every week, so much time was taken up in replying to them all...

On my way back to London I had two hectic days in Paris with Suzanne Orth, whom we�d known in Cape Town when she was with the French Consulate. She took me on a detailed tour of every quarter of Paris and to the Louvre and many fascinating museums. Late in the evening, after a visit to the Opera, it was lovely to have a chance meeting with a South African friend, Ivy, at the bus stop!