I think the latest I ever stayed at the office was the night in January 1936 when George V died. I had typed two leaders for Mr Wilson, one to be used in the event of his death, and the other of his rallying. About 1.30 a.m. came the penultimate message: �The King�s life is slowly drawing to a close.� I then went sadly home.

Pat and I were persuaded by my parents not to consider an early marriage, mainly because of Pat�s financial position and prospects at the time, but we hoped the wedding would be in 1936. During that year I got to know Pat�s father, Harry, who came as a pharmacist to Cape Town, and also his mother Ada when she joined him for a few months. Then Harry changed jobs and they went back to the Eastern Cape.

Elizabeth Neal left Lusaka and got a job at the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg. In Lusaka a young lawyer, Dick Swarbreck, saw the Purchases� photo of Elizabeth, and he fell in love and followed her to Johannesburg, but Elizabeth turned him down. When the Exhibition was over, she stayed with us for a short while, having thoroughly enjoyed her �African� experiences and having fitted in so well with all of us, and then returned to England. A little later she married the priest of their local parish church, Walter Lillie.

Pat and I wrote lovingly to each other every week, but our hopes for a wedding that year receded, as Pat quarrelled with Gordon James and left Lusaka without a job. In Bulawayo he read an advertisement for a General Manager of an estate planned for citrus near Chipinga in the Eastern Districts of Southern Rhodesia. He read up about citrus in Bulawayo Public Library and wrote a memorandum on the subject. He was interviewed by Theo Hadden in Que Que, who was a director of the Sabi-Tanganda Development Company, and was offered the job on this estate.

He spent frustrating months there, unable to carry out his plans as he was not given the promised backing and finance, and he was able to do very little of the needed development, though he did talk the directors out of citrus as being quite uneconomic there. He thought that cattle would be an obviously good investment in the area, and he also visualised the land cleared and planted to wheat.

His nearest neighbours were Mr and Mrs Grafton Phillips (The Uncle and Aunt as we knew them later) and Arthur Ward on Tanganda Tea Estate, who had started the tea industry in Southern Rhodesia in 1930. He was a welcome guest at Tanganda, and he and the Aunt�s niece Molly were particular friends. He also, travelling on his motorbike, spent time getting to know people in and around Chipinga.