And now I really must tell you a little about our own village club. In the old days we always used to play on the Common, where the turf was excellent and the boundaries out of sight; but as London got nearer and nearer, and every train belched forth a volume of trippers right across the ground, we had to shift our quarters, and for £10 a year we now have a large but not exclusive interest in a ten-acre field. A large square, capable of providing about a dozen good wickets during the summer, is enclosed with posts and chains, and the patient labour of our groundman and umpire (who in his leisure hours is also a shoemaker and a lamplighter) is year by year producing better results. For although it is unwise to have a perfect pitch for half-day cricket, yet, on the other hand, it must not be dangerous, and with the limited means at the disposal of a village club, the happy medium is not easy to attain. As the seasons roll on, patches are repaired with turf “sneaked” from the Common, weeds are removed (some of them), manure and fine soil is bush-harrowed in, seed is sown, and every summer we congratulate ourselves that, if not yet quite like the Oval (which we do not want it to be!), at all events our ground is the envy of our neighbours. I should add that this year (1902) we had a whip-up and laid the water on, but only used it twice! Perhaps, in connection with our wicket, I may be allowed to recount a little reminiscence, still fresh in my memory, of the days when the pitch was not what it is now. A short-tempered and fiery member of an opposing team was batting, as he always did, in spectacles, when a rising ball from our local Lockwood hit him right in the face. Seeing what I supposed was his eye drop out on the pitch, I dashed forward to field and return it, only to discover one glass of the spectacles unbroken on the turf. Beyond a cut on the bridge of his nose, the man had suffered no hurt, but it was long before he paid us another visit, or the scorched grass recovered from his language.