I was nearly thirty, and found it a solemn thought. Indeed, I wrote a sonnet called ‘Farewell, my Youth’ and recited it at one of Ralph and Marie West’s great evenings. None seemed impressed, but they were mostly middle-aged so I left it at that, and obeyed the Zen Master’s injunction when asked ‘What is Tao?’ ‘Walk on!’ I carne to love this phrase and its spiritual injunction so much that I wrote a book on it, Walk On!, which has sold steadily for forty years. But Puck and I no longer literally walked. We bought a car for £15 from Geoffrey Burton, my friend Rene Donne’s husband, and I learned most incompetently to drive. I had not been made sufficiently aware of the necessity of declutching when stopping in traffic, so the engine stalled and my barrister pupil, Stephen Langdon, had to get out again and again to wind her up. After which, for a while, in our beautiful top hats, we pursued our way.