The Oxford of my youth in the late 1940s: Dead Man’s Walk:

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Sunny afternoons in Christ Church meadows. Boys playing cricket on Christ Church School playing field. Magdalen tower serenely presiding over the ceremony, half-a-mile away, beyond the Botanical Gardens, beside the Cherwell. Horse-chestnut trees in the north-west corner of the playing field, making a shady-pool of coolness over the gravel walk round the corner of the playing field just there. Sounds of rowing on the Isis, half-a-mile away to the south. And the chimes of the college clocks marking the quarters, as the decade following the upheaval in Europe winds its way to a conclusion. And Phil (PBA) is age 7 in summer 1949, a not-very-able sports-pupil of Jimmy Humphries (for football) and ‘Mr Hart’ (for cricket) at the choir school, though at the school sports event I recall I found my (in those days) greater height gave me an edge in the running events which were rewarded with actual cash prizes! How strange. Can it really have been so?

qaa© Philip B Archer 2014