I think all the Australian batsmen who came back from South Africa felt a bit under the pump. We simply had to perform or not stay in the side.

True, there were the usual night-sounds of the country—the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine—but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy—his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair.

I need to collimate my telescope so that the images are clearer.