THERE is a sense of privilege, and there is sitting in a stand at Trent Bridge on one of the finest days of the year witnessing one of the finest events in the cricketing world.
The sense of privilege comes not just from watching The Ashes, one of the defining touchpoints in England's evolving relationship with its distant Australian cousins.
It comes from being able to wander out of the city centre and enter one of the great international cricketing stadiums. Where once there were charming and almost quaint two-tier wooden stands, there are now cantilevered metal sculptures which have gently transformed an intimate provincial cricket ground into an impressively elegant international stadium.
We are incredibly lucky to have Trent Bridge in Nottinghamshire.
Lucky, too, to have people with a vision for what it could become, people with a talent (like the city architect, Maber) to bring that vision to life.
On a summer's day, you can argue that Trent Bridge is the jewel in the city's tourism crown, with snaking columns of yellow-shirted Australians wandering down London Road, dwelling perhaps at Hooters (which saw an early-morning opportunity and made the most of it) before converging on what was, for five days, The Most Important Place in Global Cricket.
Did it bring in the tens of millions forecast?
I don't know. And in a way I don't care. It showed the city in a magnificent light, and that's something Nottingham has considerable cause to be thankful for.
Bringing the bad stuff under control is one thing. Properly exploiting the good is another. And we have a way to go there.
While England and Australia were toiling away in the heat at Trent Bridge, workers were toiling away in Old Market Square turning the slabbed open space into Nottingham-on-Sea.
This annual beach-fest has come to define the Market Square. Millions of pounds of public money meant weary old Slab Square became an elegantly simple open space.
If you visit other cities you'll realise that the square we take for granted is actually one of the great civic open spaces of England, a focal point which welcomes people with open arms and says that this is your city.
But does it say it loud enough? When there is a beach there, when there is an event like Armed Forces Day, I have no doubt.
But on a wet winter weekend when there are dreary wooden stalls flogging a range of depressingly predictable "cuisine", I see not just a £7m square but an entire city being sold short.
Maximising the potential of Old Market Square matters not just because it is a space which begs for clever, creative, imaginative exploitation of a great open space. It matters because the way we do leisure holds the key to maintaining and expanding Nottingham's position as a place people want to go.
During the boom, a time when a thin sliver of plastic put the world at your feet, the vast range of Nottingham's shops meant that people would come to the city in their droves and spend.
Now? Our position is no longer assured. People have less money. They are less willing to rely on credits cards. And the lure of internet retailing and click-and-collect means a day out is no longer defined by shopping.
You get the sense with Nottingham that we're a bit of a curate's egg, that the potential is there in parts but not whole. There is the shopping, there is the Playhouse and Theatre Royal, the Galleries of Justice and the Contemporary, the Michelin-starred dining of Sat Bains and the intimate individuality of The Larder on Goose Gate. And all the places in between.
And then there are the twin puzzles. Old Market Square and the Castle. The huge opportunities we never seem able to confront.
The Square shows flashes of potential. Yet it seems uncoordinated, as if its activities are planned without considering who else can be involved.
And some of those activities are unambitious and homespun.
While the Square should not be exclusive, nor should it assume that the alternative is the lowest common denominator. Christmas tat is not special, particularly when it does nothing to help the shops that surround the square and reduces that great open space to the level of a flea market.
Last Wednesday night and last Thursday night, the first two days of The Ashes at Trent Bridge, I felt as if I was in a place with a buzz, a busy night-time economy where bars, cafés, restaurants and hotels would be humming with customers.
This tells you just how many businesses really depend on Nottingham getting the offer it makes to visitors right.
It also tells you that – in the same way that Wimbledon does with Henman Hill/Murray Mount – Nottingham's Market Square should have used a large screen to bring cricket to the people.
That would have been a privilege for us all.
