There's a war on. We don't know how anything's going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by.

She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.

There's a war on. We don't know how anything's going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by.

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.

She thought of the last couple of years: the boredom, the narrowness of existence, the dearth of anything to look forward to. Yet now, in a single instant, the curtains had been whipped aside, and the windows been thrown open onto a brillant view that had been there, waiting for her, all the time. A view, moreover, laden with the most marvellous possibilities and opportunities.

They will come, not to paint the bay and the sea and the boots and the moors, but the warmth of the sun and the colour of the wind. A whole new concept. Such stimulation. Such vitality.

I'm getting too elderly to travel the length of the country for a free hangover.