I wrote this much for you last night:

 

“I’ve had an interesting late-afternoon watching Djokovic beat an unknown American, Kudla, in straight sets. It was a good deal more interesting than that description sounds. And the problem now is how to dispose of the feeble remainder of my time and strength.

 

Does anyone remember Kukla, Fran and Ollie? Of whom Mr. Kudla’s name reminds me.

 

I still need to support Mr Murray, and send in Italian homework, and read some more Dante. It can’t all be done. And Wimbledon comes but once a year. “

 

In the end, I got none of those things done. I am not very bright in the evening, and must pace myself accordingly.

 

2325 steps yesterday, at the end. 2381 so far today. At least I’m still moving about, within my limited range.

 

I’ve had another good day of Wimbledon today. We go into the second week with Federer and Coco Gauff still on their feet, and an interesting British teenager called Emma Raducanu. She said, engagingly, after today’s match, that her mother told her she was packing too many match outfits – with the result that now, she needs to get some washing done. She thinks the hotel has laundry facilities..

 

I love the ballboys. Ballpeople. I love them all the more for having watched the French final recently. The ballboys there were perfectly alert and helpful, but nothing like Wimbledon. Some of you may remember that my eldest grandchild, Rachel’s elder son, was chosen to be one when he was the appropriate age. (He’s now ominously near 40.) He had started training when he developed a stomach problem.

 

He was born with a condition called malrotation of the gut, and needed a life-saving operation at two days old. He came through that in good order. So when this problem cropped up in his early teen-aged years, Rachel kept asking the doctors whether it could have anything to do with that had happened to him as a baby, and they all said, No, no, madam, we don’t know what’s wrong but we’re sure it’s not that. But it was – Rachel is rarely if ever wrong – and he had another operation to cure adhesions, or do I mean lesions? And he got better, and Wimbledon took him back into training, and then he broke his arm playing cricket.

 

Out of all those ballpeople, Thomas would of course have been chosen for the men’s singles final, and the Duke of Kent, who reviews them before presenting the prizes at the end, would of course have stopped and heaped extra praise upon him. But it was not to be.