So I went to Naples and I shared a cabin on the Constitution with a guy called Knight, and it put me off the idea of sharing... sharing bedrooms with men. He had a very rancid smell to him. Anyway, got to Naples, I went to... went to Pompeii, I went to Herculaneum, I went to the Naples museum, and I was enjoying myself a lot more now that I was moving towards Paris and Beetle. So that was pretty good.

I then went to... went to Paestum, took an excursion to Paestum, Pompeii, all that stuff which shows all... in those days the obscene paintings in the brothel of Pompeii were... had little cupboards over them, and the women weren't allowed to come in to look and you had to go in and then he would show you the various things that he showed you. Wow. I went to Rome, stayed in a pension, I went to all the things you should go to in Rome when you first go there. And then and then and then eventually I went back to Paris, and Beetle wasn't coming until after Christmas so I stayed in the little hotel we stayed at and booked rooms, and then on Boxing Day, I think it was, she flew in and I met her at the Invalides, and we've pretty well been together ever since, actually.

So then there was the question of getting married and I... I wasn't particularly keen on being married because I thought it was unromantic. I liked the idea of being a writer with a mistress and all that living in the garret. I don't think Beetle was very bothered about whether she got married or not, but we came back to England for reasons which I have to ask her, I can't remember why we did, some time in January, and my parents and hers, I think, were rather keen that we should marry, and... and we did.

So we got married and then we went back to Paris the same night. Back to the Hôtel du Continent. And a friend of ours had rented a little... part of an apartment in a district called Crimée, in the 11e arrondissement which is sort of a working class area, somewhere out there beyond the Bastille. And this very nice woman, called Jackie Weiss who we'd been in a play with in the synagogue, a research biologist, gave us the room that she had in this little flat in Crimée on the first floor. And we had three months in Crimée during which I wrote the novel which I has started in... in Juan-les-Pins, I rented a typewriter with an English keyboard and away I went.

And we went to the opera and we went to the movies and we cooked very simple meals and everything was absolutely terrific. Except very cold, but very cold.