In 1957 we started going to St Tropez for our summer holidays - driving down the Route Nationale 7. Five of us packed in the old Austin Atlantic...

After the gloom of England it was fantastic - and boiling hot. We spent our days on Tahiti plage, almost deserted then, a strip of white sand curving away like a dessert island. In the afternoons, my sister and I might sneak off down Pampelone to the nude beach. Nonchalantly we strolled, pretending to stare out to sea, while behind us, bodies emerged from little dug-out pits like roasted seals.

FATHER, AUNT OLIVE,  AND MY MOTHER ON THE BEACH IN ST TROPEZ — **FATHER, AUNT OLIVE, AND MY MOTHER ON THE BEACH IN ST TROPEZ**

But it was the cocktail hour that I found so utterly mesmerizing, sitting at Senequier’s, the most fashionable café on the port...

By seven o’clock the terrace was packed, the streets swarming. Sports cars roared back and forth, rich boys in their open Lamborghinis and Fiats who revved their engines and tried to pick up girls. Girls, by the way, who seemed to me (a gawky eleven year old) unimaginably beautiful. Long-legged, olive-skinned creatures in short shorts who glided in and out of the cafes, with their heads thrown back.

On a good day we would see Brigitte Bardot, shopping, or walking her little dog. She was already a legend, having just starred in “And God Created Woman” - at the time a somewhat scandalous film, shot in St Tropez and directed by her husband, Roger Vadim - known thereafter as the "incorrigible seducer."

I stood next to Bardot once in the fashionable boutique “Choses. ” It was the first time I’d ever seen ballet slippers, sold in twenty different colors, or striped matelot trousers – or, of course, a film star. My English manners intact, I simply stared at her perfect body and perfect mouth, completely immobilized.

ME AND MY BROTHER -  ON THE PORT 1957 — **ME AND MY BROTHER - ON THE PORT 1957**

And there were other sightings that year: “Bonjour Tristesse” was being filmed, starring David Niven, Deborah Kerr, and a young Jean Seberg.

I watched with the crowds as the elf-like Seberg careened past us (in take after take) on a bicycle. As it happened, I was standing next to Francoise Sagan, the author of "Tristesse," her best-selling book. Nonchalantly, I asked, “Can I be in the film?” She looked at me, then said, “Tu es minion. Porquoi pas?” You’re cute. Why not? But when I told my mother, she said no. Besides, we were leaving in a few days.

SEBERG,  SAGAN AND DIRECTOR OTTO PREMMINGER — **SEBERG, SAGAN AND DIRECTOR OTTO PREMMINGER**

So instead, I just sat in Senequier, eating my green pistachio ice cream mesmerized by the parade. The local boys, for instance. The wet-lipped gigolos who whistled and shouted over the noise - the staccato pop pop of velo solexes, cars honking, and motorcycles in full roar - Hellooo… eh, minou, tres belle… I’d never seen anything like it. On the pretext of making a run for the toilets, I’d duck inside the café, then come out by a different door so I could watch the action on my own. I wanted to absorb the sounds, the smells, commit the scene to memory...

I was afraid that something might happen, that due to some unforeseen circumstance—my own death, perhaps—I would be prevented from coming back.

From then on, I dreamed of buying a house in France. It took 49 years (and many catastrophic diversions to get there...). Ironically, later in Paris, I had an affair with Roger Vadim, a tryst that lasted far longer than it should have and based initially on the not so spectacular coincidence of my birthday falling on the same day as Brigitte Bardot’s.