Of course, like any young girl of my age, I fell in and out of love – romances that were serious at the time, some even lasting a couple of years – and I received ten proposals of marriage. However I never felt deeply enough in love to accept any of them. At the age of twenty-eight, I experienced a period of introspection and quiet despair, which was not helped by a nasty bout of Asian flu. I thought myself to be a ‘nothing’. I wanted to be a writer and yet I wasn’t writing anything worth reading. I even stopped writing my diary – something that I had kept up pretty much since the age of seven. Instead I spent a considerable amount of time carrying out official engagements. I was invited to serve as patron or president of a number of local, county or national organisations including the Royal London Society for the Blind; the Embroiderers’ Guild (inappropriate as I didn’t embroider but it proved impossible to refuse such determined ladies); the Music Circle of the Royal Overseas League (even more inappropriate but they had a chairman who point blank refused to take no for an answer); member of the International Council of the United World Colleges (no chance of saying no to the president, my father); and – again, coerced by my father – I became the Commandant of the Girls’ Nautical Training Corps (I felt ridiculous walking across station concourses on my way to their events, dressed in mock admiral’s regalia).
