The �top table� was on the far side of the back stoep, and guests were at small tables on the lawn. George Wilson made a speech, and Pat replied. We spent some time chatting to all our friends, and then went off to change. My going-away outfit was a light brown frock and three-quarter coat, medium high-heeled brown shoes and a snappy little brown hat, with which I wore a stone-marten fur.

Pat and I drove off in Dad�s Hillman Minx for a week at the Riviera Hotel at Hermanus. Back at Aytoun for a weekend, all the family lay about on Sunday on the back lawn discussing the list of groceries which we would need on arrival at Orange Grove. The list was posted off to Taylor and Nisbet in Umtali, who duly sent the order on to Melsetter on the R.M.S.

On our way north in the Ford vanette we did a quick round staying with and seeing many of Pat�s relations in the Eastern Province. Driving round East London, Pat pointed to an obviously unfinished building with large columns indicating a big enterprise, and laughingly said: �That was one of Harry�s dreams of a fortune.� This disrespectful reference to their father dismayed Kay, who said: �What will Shirley think of us?� But Pat said: �She�d better learn early about our family�s follies.� With Dr Ziervogel and Kay, we also visited the Stutterheim forest, and in Grahamstown we admired the monument in Main Street to the early settlers, on one panel of which is depicted Pat�s great grandmother running through the enemy �Kaffir� lines with the much-needed keg of gunpowder.

We took about ten days to reach Southern Rhodesia, where in Fort Victoria we spent our first nights with Frank (magistrate) and Eileen Yates, Rhodesian friends of Pat�s, and visited the Zimbabwe Ruins. Then we carried on towards Melsetter.