They were affluent, but aspired to true wealth.

Okay, this joke worked better when Jim Bowden was still the GM, with his fetish for toolsy outfielders and troubled second-chancers.

Here were old buildings, and mazy webs of wandering; soft cliff was handy, dark wood and rushing waters, tangled lanes, fuzzy corners, nooks of overhanging, depths of in-and-out hood-winks of nature, when she does not wish man to know everything about her.

The purpose of today's column is to cheer us both up, despite the inescapable fact the world is f..ked, not to mention cactused, knackered, stuffed, rooted and ruined