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The proceedings had a traditional routine and lasted for the best part of a week. This routine had grown steadily from small beginnings and had finally flowered into a series of parties, all following closely on each other's heels.

It began on the Friday before the first Monday in August, and the house filled with people we had either known at school or as students. The only similarity between us all was in age and in the subsequent slight sameness of outlook. Younger brothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts crept in as the years went by, but there never seemed to be any older folk in the house-party.

When I say the house filled I mean it strained its seams. It is a largish rambling old place possessing endless store and box rooms, which all came in very useful as spare bedrooms at these times.

Out of this gathering P.Y.C. could always collect a full cricket team, with certain augmentations from among the neighbours. There was never any dearth of men, and in fact they often had to play thirteen aside to get everybody in. Friday evening was always taken leisurely, and also with the various more important preparations which no one would have liked to miss. Albert and Alec his assistant always appeared on Friday, making an awful mess when everything was tidy for the visitors. Every year he thought out something more ambitious and complicated in the way of garden lighting, and the execution of his new masterpiece was always well worth watching and assisting, for in the years he had acquired as remarkable a collection of cables, coloured bulbs and multi-way switches as ever delighted human amateur. The assortment took rather a long time to put up of course, and in the day-time the garden had a tendency to look like a main overhead telephone section after the storm, but, even allowing for fuses, by Monday night the effect was always impressive and original.