ABSTRACT
On 9th February, 1967 I took the Trident to Nice, after an absence from France of two and a half years. My vitality had been like water absorbed in a large sponge by the insularity of England. To get out of England there and then was essential if I was to remain emotionally and mentally alive. I wondered, however, when I nearly fainted as the Trident rose up from the runway, if my decision to go had been wise, but autosuggestion that 'all would be well' worked, and I arrived safe and sound at Nice. My friend Ann took me from the airport to her home on a hill. She gave me a room with a window to the west looking at St Paul, and another window to the north looking over the valley to Vence. The outlook was the same as two and a half years before, which was reassuring. I always embark upon a journey as if I were going to be hanged. We are at the mercy of change and we never know what we may find at the other end. Nature changes so slowly that human eyes cannot perceive its transformation, and thus we welcome a sameness as a signal of encouragement and peace. In contrast, what human hands and machines do to nature, and perhaps even more to the frame of human existence, houses and towns, jolts us into shocks, questions, and sometimes admiration.
