One of the things I recall of the night that followed the sealing of the Ashes win — and time has not made the memory of that evening any sharper — was my wife Nichola laughing and saying to me, “You’re going to get on that bus and there might not be anybody there.” I reckoned she could be right, as the thought of central London coming to a standstill for a few cricketers seemed a bit ridiculous.

This was quickly dispelled, however, when we left the hotel for our first appointment of the day at the Lord Mayor’s offices.

There were drinks on offer there, which we took, and for many of us that was a bit like pulling into a petrol station when the gauge is showing almost full. From there we walked on to the bus, which was crammed with our families, a few ECB officials, photographers and some members of the broadcast media.

It was quite surreal, and it was obvious that the British public were not going to stand us up on our victory parade. Outside the Mayor’s office it was absolutely packed, with people hanging out of windows, standing on bus shelters, even climbing up trees.

The journey took about an hour, and although it was good fun, it seemed longer than that. I was in a daze, gripped by a strange mixture of hangover and adrenalin, with this extraordinary scene unfolding in front of us. My arm had waved so much it had nearly fallen off before we reached Trafalgar Square for a celebration rally with a bit of a sing-song. Could so many people really have been touched by this? Although I have come to question whether the whole exercise turned out to be a wise thing to do or not, I certainly did not reflect upon it at the time. And given the state we were in, we just went with the flow.

From Trafalgar Square we went to 10 Downing Street, it now being about 24 hours since my stomach had been churning so badly I had not been able to watch at the Oval. We were ushered into the garden and quickly discovered that there were no drinks there.

So we asked whether they were meant to be running a dry ship, and an assistant disappeared and came back with some lukewarm wine. This was fairly undrinkable so we collared Tony Blair’s son, Euan, who helpfully took himself upstairs to his dad’s private kitchen, from where he brought back some properly chilled wine and beers. Various urban myths have grown up about that day, about whether someone secretly irrigated the garden at Number 10 or threw up on the bus, but I honestly do not know.

I was present, however, when Tony Blair came out on to his doorstep to ask, jokingly, what we and our accompanying photographers were doing there. Then it was on to Lord’s for a final picture and yet more drinks in the Long Room. I had had enough of everything by now and just wanted to get home. I went back to the hotel and tried to venture out again with Colly [Paul Collingwood] and Ashley [Giles], but I was emotionally and physically drained, too knackered to enjoy it. I longed to get in the car and drive back to my home comforts.

The following weeks were still fairly mad. The commercial talk about our new market values started almost immediately, a special stamp was being brought out with me on it — heaven forbid — and media requests were flooding in by the day. As were literally hundreds of letters, which I particularly enjoyed.

In truth I basked in it all and the sense of achievement, but at the same time I just wanted to chill out and be me.

For all the delight, there was an element of fear as well. I realised that my life had abruptly changed and I had gone from being the normal bloke who was primarily a sportsman to something of a celebrity who everyone wanted to know. For all that I liked a degree of notoriety through what I had done in sport, I was less enamoured of everyone wanting to know everything about me. I was given the freedom of Sheffield, which I considered a real honour, and about 10,000 people turned up outside the Town Hall for the presentation, which was incredible. And so it went on in the fallow period before we were due to set off for Pakistan in late October.

A recurring theme in interviews was how the whole Ashes experience might affect us. I had written about KP [Kevin Pietersen], for example, “As long as we can keep him grounded and he doesn’t get too carried away with his celebrity lifestyle this young man can be one of the best.” I was asked about it again at the airport press conference on October 25 prior to our departure for Pakistan. I made all the right noises but underneath I was worried about the effects of what we had been through.

In some ways Pakistan could not have been a better place to go, a tough tour about as far away from distractions and the bright lights as cricket can take you. But there was a lot of adjusting to do as our lives had changed since we met up a day too early back in July as a group of likely lads at the Landmark hotel in Marylebone ahead of the first Ashes Test.

Many of us were now pretty mainstream “personalities” who had either been offered new commercial opportunities or enhanced versions of what we had already. It had been widely reported that KP was dating Caprice, which added to the new-found sense of flamboyancy around the team.

In all professional sports teams there is talk about money, but I quickly noticed more discussion than usual about the commercial deals among us.

This was only natural to a degree, and I do not suppose I was immune to it myself. I suspected the team was going to be harder to manage, and one aspect of it was that individual sponsorships were now at such a level that players would focus on them rather than on what they had to do for the team’s collective backers.

Although the bus ride to Trafalgar Square had been a great experience, it was perhaps all a bit too much, and whoever gets offered it next time should give it a miss, as happened this summer.

There had also been, since the Oval Test, a nagging sense that, for me at least, it might never get as good as this again. In some ways, if you could pick your timing, this would all have happened to me at 33 or 34 and I would have been happy to sign off there and then.

More spills than thrills with me under a catch

I was basically never taught how to catch properly, which is a major reason why I dropped so many over the years. It was not until the latter stage of my career that I began to catch better and I didn’t have such a terror of the ball coming to me. Clearly there was not much wrong with my hand-eye co-ordination, so a lot must have been down to technical deficiencies and the wrong habits.

I just never had confidence in my catching and, despite having an excellent eye, my technique was never up to scratch in this area. One of the definite improvements in modern coaching is that there is much more emphasis on catching methods but, incredibly with hindsight, I was never really taught properly how to do it at the right age. People say that you should be able to do it because it is something you practise every day, but I just never felt comfortable with the ball coming towards me. When my mentality was good I would back myself to snaffle the ball, and it was something that both Duncan Fletcher and Peter Moores improved in me.

I will admit, though, that as captain I would put myself in positions on the field where I did not think that catches would be offered. It was the worst part of the game for me and there were times after the odd spillage when I would dread going out to field and yearn for the ball not to come anywhere near me in the air. My reservoir of confidence was very shallow in that regard, although perversely I have also caught some blinders in addition to committing some terrible blunders.

The time I was most susceptible was when I was concentrating intensely on the captaincy, but it was something that was with me even before I became a professional. The feeling of dropping a catch in front of a large crowd has to be one of the worst in cricket; there is no hole deep enough to fall into. You feel embarrassed and that you have let everyone down, from your team-mates to the supporters.

You could make a DVD out of my fielding howlers with England, and probably have enough material left over for a sequel.

Lucky escape that helped to shape the future

There was a remarkable personal symmetry about the fact that when I started playing for England in matches at Old Trafford we would stay at the Marriott hotel in Worsley. It was in this Manchester suburb that I had spent the first years of my life, and here where I came close to death before I had even picked up a cricket bat in anger.

It was about half a mile up the road from the hotel where, at the age of 6, I was on my way to play football with a mate.

A car flew round the corner and knocked me over at speed.

Passers-by moved me up against a tree while the ambulance was called, and it turned out my grandparents were in the queue of traffic that backed up as a result.

I do not remember much about it beyond waking up in hospital with a huge cast on my left leg, but it was a lucky escape and the most serious of the physical mishaps that seem to have dogged me throughout my life.

According to the many specialists I have seen over the years it is unlikely, but possible, that the accident is connected with the problems I have had with my knees and other parts of my anatomy. However, even now I still get the odd unexplained ache in my left leg where it was originally broken.

But good things can come out of bad, and this first — and sadly not last — spell of rehabilitation was the time when, laid up for weeks on end, I began to watch Test cricket on television.

It also led to me getting my first bat, one that my father, Graham, got signed by the late David Bairstow at a benefit function that his company was supporting.

- © Michael Vaughan 2009. Extracted from Time to Declare — My Autobiography, to be published by Hodder & Stoughton on October 29 at £19.99. To order a copy for the special offer price of £17.99 (post free) call Books First on 0845 271 2134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst