Certainly I left it and I went to Strasbourg and Strasbourg was great fun. I didn't do much work at university, I really didn't. I went there from time to time and attended a few lectures, but there wasn't really very much point. I knew I wasn't going to be able to pass... to get any degrees, I was only going to be there for 6 months for Heaven's sakes, you know, so there was no point – it was really just a way to fill in my time. And I was filling in my time very happily at Strasbourg. I was taking music lessons again, thank God, and living with this very nice young family. He was a young Strasbourg lawyer called Paul Schmidt with a very nice, very attractive wife who must have been in her early 30s, called Betty who was a very, very good tennis player. We played a lot of tennis, we also played a lot of ping-pong after lunch, we went to a... there was a sort of cafe round the corner which had a marvellous ping-pong table and I rather prided myself with ping-pong and she was very, very good at it too.
And one day, one winter day after we'd been playing ping-pong, we opened the first door to the outer cold, there were double doors to keep the cold out, I opened the first one, between the double doors, I found myself seized and given an enormous kiss by Betty, a rather wet one on the lips, and I was terribly surprised! I had no idea this was going to happen. It took me completely off balance. And then this then became rather a thing. And I... I can't believe she was seriously in love with this 17-year-old boy, Englishman, but I think she was probably rather keen to devirginise me which she failed to do alas, but she used to try quite hard. But it was always rather alarming for me. I mean she was... we would start dancing cheek-to-cheek to the gramophone, but at five minutes to one when her husband was coming in at one o'clock, and at any moment I saw myself being caught in these compromising positions. I don't think he would have minded a bit. I think she probably told him every step that she was taking and gave him a full nightly report about how the programme was getting on. I don't know, it might have been like that, it might not, I don't know. Anyway, he never seemed... he always seemed to be completely relaxed about the whole thing, but I say I never really... I doubt whether she'd have let me get further than first base, but I never even got to first base, I was too embarrassed really, you know.