More robust personalities than mine would have stood up to it: it is a common premarital complaint. But I did not. I developed headaches. I immediately diagnosed a cerebral tumour and hurried to London to see a brain specialist, savouring everything on the way with exquisite farewell tenderness, even the fish served for lunch by British Railways.

The brain specialist listened to me for five minutes and packed me off to a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist was an important and busy man and I arrived at the end of the day, but he let me talk for a quarter of an hour while he signed a few letters and looked for his car key.

'A long holiday,' he said sternly, putting on his overcoat.

'Why don't you take a ship? You won't have any work to do. I did it when I was your age. Signed on a cattle boat going to Murmansk. Half the deckhands were washed overboard one night and I had to turn-to with the rest of them to work the ship. Great fun.'

'I don't think I'd be much good as a deckhand.'

'Anyway, you've got to have a holiday. Put on your best suit and walk down Leadenhall Street. You never know your luck.'

'All right, sir,' I said doubtfully. 'If you advise.'

Thus my honour was saved by modern psychiatry.

The next afternoon I tramped Leadenhall Street, trying to get a berth out of every big shipping office and, by mistake, a branch of Barclay's Bank. It was one of those unfriendly November days when dawn and dusk meet each other in a dim conspiracy over the lunch-table. The rain drizzled onto the grimy pavements, soaking through my mackintosh and the seams of my shoes, and my depression deepened with the twilight. It looked as if the sea had rejected me.

When the offices began to close and the important shipping men were already hurrying westwards I walked up the creaking stairs of the Fathom Line building, prepared to sail with Captain Bligh if necessary. There I was introduced to a Mr. Cozens, a little bald man crouched in a high leather chair. He was suspiciously pleased to see me.