What better way to take in the glamorama of our West and Southwest than through the big, wide-angle picture windows of an S.E streamliner.

But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels

Nicolaas, or Nick, as the family called him, wanted to turn professional but an ear injury, sustained during the war, spiked his plans.

Now we were competing with ox-drawn carts, dark, sweat-shiny men carrying piles of pots or bricks on their heads, scooters conveying whole families, and a marketful of vendors whose wares spilled from the broken pavements on to the streets.