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?