No one could hit a ball like Mr. Catsup. Every Saturday without fail he would be at the cricket ground, standing at the crease, and every Saturday without fail somebody would be there to bowl for him.

He never said anything; he just walked onto the field with his bat, adjusted his pads and waited for a ball, or two balls, or three. Sometimes there was a queue of bowlers, and he’d wait until each had bowled before he left. There would be a crowd to watch as well; some people came every week to sit in the stands and watch and listen.

Thunk.

Thunk.

Thunk.

Up out of the ground, each ball soaring into the sky in precisely the same direction. Nobody ever saw any of those balls again.

What my father could never explain is why nobody ever wondered where they went, and what the people there did with them. After twenty years, I thought that they must have quite a lot of them.