Seriously though, I think I’m going to trawl Netflix for Cathedrals documentaries. Any suggestions?

In the lore of the firm I work for it is said that one had to be a Freemason to get anywhere. I think that was not uncommon in Bradman’s day. Now just a few more years will see the end of it.

Funny character, Bradman, his came from the same part of Suffolk/Cambridgeshire as some of my non-Yorkshire forebears and in old age was the spitting image of my uncle Eric. Not that that makes him funny at all. It’s more the way that his Irish team-mates - O’Reilly, Fingleton - didn’t seem to care all that much for him at all. Being a Freemason didn’t help I suppose.

I’ve just come back from meeting ninme and Peter. They are two extremely pleasant young people. Very nice to look at, but a good deal nicer to talk to.

Fred Trueman held Keith Miller in the highest possible regard. Told me that himself.

Happt Bradman centenary, Brett! And for those of an American persuasion, happy LBJ centenary, former colonist! Not that they’ll talk about him in Denver.

I wish they’d have played a documentary on the building of cathedrals instead. We walked clear up to the top of St Paul’s yesterday (almost killed Peter’s already-suffering right foot but after spending 20 pounds to get in — to a church — damned if I wasn’t going to spend the afternoon there) and I just don’t get it. Moern man can’t tile a bathroom without it coming apart in ten years but how did they get those statues up there?

Incidentally, Red, don’t suppose you’ve been getting any emails from me since I’ve been here?

There’s no point in being offensively superior - a sporting contest is only a sporting contest and says nothing about the wider merits or otherwise of a given country. Otherwise East Germany might have claimed to be a successful society.

Having said which, one point of agreement between Australians and Yorkshiremen, and not universally understood elsewhere, is that, while one should play the game as hard and as fairly as possible, and derive enjoyment from the simple act of doing so, you don’t fully enjoy a cricket match unless you win as well. But it isn’t a matter of life and death. As the great Keith Miller, Australian war hero and cricketer of the very highest standards, once observed when asked about the pressures under which modern cricketers perform, “Pressure is having a Messerschmitt up your a**se”.