What do the governor of the Bank of England, the editor of this newspaper, the mayor of London and I have in common? Answer: we all sat in our seats on centre court until the very end of the thrilling Wimbledon men’s final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

I have not had to sit so long in one place (and keep quiet) since Cost Centre #1 left school two weeks ago. Then we perched on the pews in the school chapel for an hour’s service of thanksgiving (in particular we gave thanks that one child at least would no longer require school fees), followed by two stints of more than an hour each in which every one of about 200 children was given a citation by his housemaster or housemistress. That makes 199 children that did not belong to me whose citations I had to sit through. There was a break for a cup of tea in the middle, during which one impossibly slim mother remarked on how hard the pews were for those without ample padding of the posterior. I felt compelled to inform her that even those of us with plentiful padding in that department were finding it quite uncomfortable.