He speaks in your voice, Lancastrian, and there’s a pie in his hand bought half-price from the Co-op.

It’s a work day, sure, but he’s nowhere near the mail centre. He wants to be here instead, at Old Trafford Cricket Ground, and sat for the next four days in the shadow of what some call giant letterboxes but which for him are angry robot mouths with bloody lips and glistening teeth bared in android fury. He wonders how much sci-fi and psilocybin the architects had ingested prior to submission. Equally, he wonders how wise was that second morning coffee.

It’s a school day too, but not for the children in their hundreds around the ground. On impromptu concrete pitches, half a dozen games are taking place. Kids with undersized bats and intense looks on their face. The fixed expression of childish concentration. Others looking for more immediate fun, are grouped by two fire engines as music blares. The song is Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds Are Burning’. Blaze-themed playlist or sheer coincidence?

A bell rings and fifteen white-clad figures assemble on the recently damp field. The local area has seen rain and the forecast predicts more, but for now play is about to start. He takes a bite of pie and 20mg of an anxiety medication and not because he expects to spend these hours on the edge of his seat. He does not come to the cricket for anything so shallow as entertainment.

Anderson bowls and a Lammonby outside edge heads toward the slips. The bowler’s right arm rises in celebration, then lowers as the ball is fumbled to the grass. Three Anderson deliveries later, yet two overs apart, this action will be repeated almost perfectly bar a different set of fingers missing the catch.

Young voices in a stand opposite chant some three syllable mantra. Lan-ca-shire? And-er-son? Padd-ing-ton? The distance and nearby construction drill and grind obscures this as it does the quartet of Fresh Air Inspectors, aged men in sun-bleached headwear, performing an autopsy of a recent match. Only snatches are audible. “Postage stamp boundary”. “Chin music”. Lancs old boy Haseeb Hameed’s digits.

Anderson bowls and Lammonby scampers a run into the on-side, escaping the strike. Anderson’s next ball, his first to Davies, sees a thick edge squirm away to the slip cordon and this time Hartley holds on. With only 5 runs on the board, Somerset are a wicket down.

He sees a man wearing the same item of branded teamwear as him. A jacket from a previous season and former kit supplier no longer available in the club shop but sold at the last home fixture from a tent by the side of the pavilion for a low low price. He considers giving the man a nod, but deems it inappropriate.

Anderson bowls and Lammonby drives into and out of the bowler’s grasp. Overhead is a stained duvet of cloud, but so far the only drops have been from fielding hands. The day is humid and he regrets his additional layers but knows he will need them later. He finishes his pie as one of the Fresh Air Inspectors carefully unwraps a wax paper rectangle to reveal not some pocket snack but a Playfair Cricket Annual. Anderson bowls full and straight and Abell misses his shot and takes it on the front pad leg before wicket. Somerset are 11 for 2. An over later, Bartlett goes to Williams in much the same manner.

After an hour’s play, the scoreboard reads 19 for 3 and shows the most productive performer for Somerset to be Lancashire, with over half the total being given as Extras. Anderson’s figures so far are 7 overs, 5 maidens, and 2 wickets for only 3 runs. Kohler-Cadmore is at the crease and has brought with him an intent to play forward and swing, back foot punching Mahmood to the rope for the first boundary of the day. It is the 17th over, and in that single shot Kohler-Cadmore matches Lammonby’s total from 52 balls faced.

Kohler-Cadmore flashes at a Balderson delivery, aiming somewhere down the ground, though the ball flys away off for four in the opposite direction. A follow up goes where it was intended but not as far as the rope. Lammonby drives through the covers to bring up the Somerset 50, and the Fresh Air Inspectors talk Catholicism and Philip of Spain’s fingernails.

The final act of Kohler-Cadmore’s inning, a display featuring more errant slashes than a nightclub toilet, is an attempt to deposit Mahmood into the other Old Trafford. Bat fails to meet ball and leg stump is uprooted. This action in the middle happens so quick he wishes to see it again, but resists the temptation to go online as he know a clip won’t hit the Lancs Twitter feed for a good fifteen minutes and doesn’t want to become lost in (a) some nostalgic musical diversion (b) some infuriating political diversion or (c) asking Sachin Tendulkar for his honest opinion of Tetley’s bitter.

Four wickets down, Somerset are 55. A giraffe, a dog, a star and a dolphin stand by the field. A lone cormorant flies overhead.

He has the urge to urinate. He looks at the time on the scoreboard, and the name of the bowler, Hartley, for likely the final over before lunch. He calculates the odds of a wicket falling and lays it against the fact in an hours’ time most of what he has seen will have drifted into the past. He still has an urge to urinate and so misses the impending mascot race.

With play paused and Somerset 67 for 4, he wanders the ground, those parts not closed off for construction and outright inconvenience. He sees another man wearing the same item of branded teamwear as him. A jacket from a previous season and former kit supplier no longer available in the club shop but sold at the last home fixture from a tent by the side of the pavilion for a low low price. He wonders how many of these things Lancs managed to rid themselves of.

He watches as three grown men commandeer equipment left idle by the kids to reenact the 1993 Ball of the Century, just shy of its thirty-year anniversary. Behind the stumps is an Ian Healy about double the original’s size. A shaven-skulled Gatting, miniature bat in hand, is bewildered. The green-capped, long-bearded Shane Warne wheels away, fist raised from a Stone Island coat.

He returns to the present and his seat to feast on a sandwich. The schoolchildren are subdued following their feed, as are the Lancs bowlers. Lammonby cuts the first ball of the afternoon from Williams away to the boundary. Rew does likewise to the third delivery from Anderson, who concedes more runs in this over than his entire morning’s work.

The batsmen are settling into their task, but the kids are getting ready to leave. They file out to their buses and back to their homes with tales for parents of a day most unusual. He wishes they would take the workmen with them.

He hears a stray fart ripple off a plastic seat like a spluttering motorboat. This ill omen brings a siren warning from the fire engines as they vacate the area, and light spots of rain appear, but not enough yet for concern. The sky darkens. The floodlights, high and slender, sparkle in the grey.

With the last ball of the 43rd over, a Rew top edge of Mahmood flies over the slips and brings up the Somerset 100. Ten minutes later, with the score 109 for 4, the hover cover roars into life and the umpires take the players off. The rain has taken hold. Soon it will be heavy and tea called early. The temperature drops as wind tears through gaps between stands, and glad as he is now of his layers, he heads for additional shelter in the pavilion.

He shows his members card to an ageing sentinel and enters a place he is still intimidated by and a little disappointed. Disappointed because it is neither wood-lined nor full of walrus-tached old boys in high-back chairs discussing Laker’s 19 in ’56, the merits of Engineer’s glove work and sideburns, or the exact height of Harry Pilling. Intimidated because of the superficial depth of his technical knowledge and the flagrant excess of his youth.

Among polyester pensioners, he stands and admires framed pictures dotting white walls. The late monarch. Engineer sweeping. Some portrait of a Basil Rathbone era Sherlock Holmes. He leaves the pavilion and returns to under The Point.

The Fresh Air Inspectors are gone though others remain and to pass the time he notes the books being read – Murakami, Pynchon, Cussler. He eavesdrops as a group in matching bobble hats loudly address someone not in attendance over a mobile connection. He watches birdlife reclaim the grass. Crows and wagtails, a pigeon and seagull each end of the hover cover.

After two hours with no play, he lifts his rucksack and hood. He heads for the exit into shining sun, but rain, light once more, still falling. He will be home soon, be dry and warm. Then tomorrow, with one eye on the forecast and the other on the sky, he will do this all again.