Many were the times I went to Paris after this first visit. I was always greeted with flowers and groups of artists and I drunk wine and had breakfast on the verandah at 29 Rue Boulard.

It was always the same. Big cheers for the English girl who comes regularly to Paris and never has any money. It did not seem to be required as there was a little pot made of blue china which had French money for stamps and for any time one wanted to go and buy something.

Life does not seem long enough to write about all these things. In years I am old but I am as young as I ever was. Our frames sag and grow limp but the mind lives along with feelings and emotions. We grow tired and wonder what is the use of it.

I seem to have left all the most important things out of my life but as I lie in bed at the age of eighty three it all comes back to me - the friends I have met and those who have passed on and everything becomes clear to me for I see how our lives are planned - do what we will nothing can alter the pattern.

Just fancy, after fifty years, Stephani’s daughter calling here at ‘Braiside’ to see me - just throwing her arms around me as if it were yesterday that we had parted. It is fifty years since I saw her and went to the Black Forest to pick bluebells and make a  

crown of daisies for her head and proclaim her the Queen of Flowers.

She came here with her husband and said they were staying at the London Docks on a boat going to Mexico and had a few hours to spend in London - so they asked the captain how far it was to come and see me and he got out a map and showed them the way. They said it was a magnificent boat and too much food.

I was surprised to see them. She told me it was had been her mother’s dying wish that she could come and find me. So this dear little girl Marianne now grown up and fifty seven years of age came on the first opportunity to see her mother’s best friend - my Stephani - whom I loved so well. Marianne said they will return in September. Perhaps she will come again?

I have had my eighty third birthday with so many cards and a long letter from Iris - Stephani’s eldest daughter - and she writes how she looks back on those days in Paris when we were all together and how she would love to have a party and bring me to stay at their home and talk over the long ago days spent with her mother and father.

Iris was born in Clifton Road - our house fifty years ago - and Guy Lewis used to carry her in his arms and toss her in the air and laugh and say, “Perhaps you will be my future wife?”