Indeed we would, and wine, and coffee. We enjoyed the warmth, the bohemian atmosphere, and above all the food. No-one seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of us. When eventually, we emerged into the misty cold, the clock still said midnight! We had forgotten that the clocks went back that night. It seemed we had enjoyed a stolen non-existent hour.

After Christmas I enrolled myself in The City of London Secretarial College to learn shorthand, typing and book-keeping on a six-month course. It was quite hard work but Peter came to London most weekends, and we still met at the Pinneys’, so we always had something to look forward to.

Peter’s money was running out and he had not nearly finished his B. Lit. Peggy and Arthur were involved with six others in researching the close links between the British Houses of Parliament and the German Nazi movement. They needed someone to write the book. So Peter came down in June and stayed with them to do the actual writing of Tory MP by Simon Haxey.

We decided we needed a holiday before I started work. When Arthur and Peggy had married they had done extensive research to discover the best place on the Cornish coast for their honeymoon. Indeed they sent a questionnaire to 120 farms round the coast of Cornwall, collated the replies and chose Kennack Sands, six or seven miles from the Lizard and around 2.5 miles along a cliff path from Cadgwith. They found it all they wished, so we got the address of the farm from them and wrote asking if we could camp in one of their fields. Indeed we could, so we sent off our tents and other equipment by goods train to await our arrival. Bill was to come with us. In those days the train went as far as Helston and we did the last twelve miles by bus.

We had a wonderful time and got to know the local fishermen, Trip (Tripconey), a Sunday painter, and many of the Lifeboat crew. We even had good weather – swam and sunbathed, walked looking for wild flowers, and drank in the Cadgwith pub.

The only day it rained we lay in our tents and sang through all the most terrible popular songs we could remember, mercifully most long since forgotten: “Three little words”, “Tiptoe through the tulips”, “If I had a talking picture of you-who”...

Peter and I firmly resolved that we would return next year if it was in any way possible.
When we got back to London I found myself a job as Private Secretary to a Press Photographer, G. Denes, a Hungarian, thirty years old. The twenty-year-old junior partner was not much use at anything – but he had a father who provided the money to set us up.