The Ashes: Day 1 carnage as it happenedEngland humiliate Australia on day of infamyClarke dejected as England leave Australia reelingSocial media reaction to Australia collapse
Even before the vocalist who announces each new day here with a rendition of Jerusalem had reached the climactic "in England's green and pleasant land", the English were fairly bounding onto Trent Bridge, Stuart Broad in the vanguard. They were bowling first, in "English conditions".
How those two words have grown into an incantation to strike fear in the hearts of Australians. To their eyes this day, the tinge of green in the pitch was more flashing red. "As tough batting conditions as I've faced in my career," said Australian captain Michael Clarke, who spent longer studying the pitch before play than half his team spent batting on it. 
And so before the last notes of Jerusalem had died, the pleasant land had become the promised one for England, armageddon for Australia. Considering what was at stake, it turned into their most wretched Ashes day of all.
The details of Australia's so-called first innings need occupy no more space than it did time. All out 60. Sixty! It's not even much of a footy score. Top score, extras, bless them.
Eight wickets for Broad, who took his 300th in Test cricket in the first over and proceeded to make a head-start on 400. All eight were caught by slips, of which there were up to six at a time, jostling for a look and a piece of the action.
Never previously in Test history had the 10th wicket fallen so few balls after the first was bowled. In the warp speed of modern Test cricket, it is impossible for a team even to capitulate at a dignified rate.
After the first wicket, England were cock-a-hoop. At the fifth, which Ben Stokes appeared to pull from his back pocket at approximately 10th slip, they were turning cartwheels. By the ninth, they were merely patting one another on the back, as if stupefied.
In the crowd, there was a hush. What had become of Australia? What had become of Test cricket?
So much for details, now for the autopsy.
Certainly, England had the morning of a lifetime. Seemingly, every ball that moved got an edge, every edge went to or near a fieldsman, every fieldsman caught it. England caught everything, including eyes. But that was effect, not cause.
From ball one, delivered without preliminaries from around the wicket, Broad hit upon a finely calibrated length that made the Australians feel they had to play and at the same time would regret it. "I felt like I wasn't going to get driven today," he said. "It was a bit of a freak day."
But Broad and Co. - Co. were also excellent - could not have reckoned on Australia's meek co-operation. Good balls were made better by hard hands pushing at them. Nearly every batsman was classically squared up, and Steve Smith cubed. Not until the appearance of tailenders Peter Nevill and Mitch Johnson did it seem to occur to the Australians that the leave was an option. It will be a long time before the Australians stop waking in the middle of the night to a translucent image of Broad, a ghostly sighing and a breathy voice-over: "English conditions."
In the case of the beleaguered Clarke, an average ball was made into a wicket-taker by a wild drive at the first delivery he faced from Broad. His thinking? "If he pitches it up, I'm going to hit it as far as I can. I watched guys around me getting out defending. Live by the sword, die by the sword."
But first ball? Like compatriot James Faulkner, Clarke should be banned from driving in England.
All else that happened on the day was compounded from that first hapless half hour. The pitch mellowed, as it always would, but by lunch England were batting on it. Mitch Starc played his full ball joker three times, but other than that, Australia's bowlers could not find England's Bermuda Triangle.
Equally, England's batsmen applied themselves as Australia's couldn't. Joe Root made an unbeaten hundred and Jonny Bairstow most of one after Alastair Cook had laid a platform. Root, once pugnacious, is now imperious, and he is only 24. His secret is to watch, wait and choose. Against this mercurial attack, he didn't have to wait long.
On such days, it feels on the receiving end as if the world has rounded on them. One calamity begets another, one goad the next provocation. Marsh for Marsh did not add a batsman and cost a bowler. The front-liners wearied, the score mounted, the slights multiplied. One edge fell short, then another, not by accident, for the England batsman rarely jabbed at the ball as the Australians did. But when one at last did carry, it was dropped by Smith, and another overflew the slips. For a final indignity, eight byes disappeared over the wicketkeeper's head.
The longer Australia have spent in England, the more foreign a land it has become. They are staring in the face of a third pantsing in four matches; the exception, Lord's, was on a pitch described by Cook as "not really English". How the Australians mocked him; they could afford to then. But it is just olde Englande and ye olde Englishe conditiones. The more Australians travel, the more insular and xenophobic their cricket grows. Empirically and statistically, Australia have forgotten how to play anywhere that fields a decent cricket team except - bizarrely - South Africa.
Sometimes, distance and time zones mute the embarrassment. By the time the shockwaves from defeat reach Australia's shores, they are merely ripples. But not when it comes to the Ashes, the most jealously guarded trophy when Australia have it, the most crusaded after when they don't.
Now they are gone again, and an ugly truth intrudes on the memories of 2013-14: by this weekend, England will have won five of the last seven Ashes series, an ascendancy disguised by the fact that Australia's two were both by whitewash. White is so much more pleasant a colour than green.