The latest volume of Dirk Bogarde's autobiography.

'I learned very early on in my life that nothing was for ever; so I should have been aware of
disillusion in early middle age: but, somehow, we try to obliterate early warnings and go
cantering along hopefully, idiotically . . .

'No matter that the tide will turn once again and destroy all that you build (and in the depth;
of your soul you know that this will happen), you thrust the spade in the hard-packed rippled
sand, outline the beginning of a moat. Soon the fort will arise, decorated all about, once again,
with shells and weed, with towers and turrets, arches and a drawbridge, each turret capped
with a conical limpet shell. As glorious as the first one ever was, probably even better from the
experience gained by its destruction, and every bit as impermanent . . .

'How odd it is that one is not prepared for the "dissolving of the fort" one has constructed with
such care in later life. But we do not learn. We always believe that it'll be all right for us. That
our fort will stand, the tide will never turn. But, of course, it does.'