“Daddy,”, my daughter Sabine asked me, as we set off to play tennis at her North London club some weeks ago, “if we get tickets for Wimbledon in the draw, would you and Jane be prepared to look after Amelie?”

“Of course”, I answered. (There was no risk of our getting tickets this time round: after two successive years sitting on Number One court watching torrential rain pour down we had decided to give the draw a miss in 2013.  What I didn’t anticipate was that, two hours later, Sabine would be dancing around having ended up with a pair of tickets for the men’s final.

So off we went to their place in Winchmore Hill this last Saturday in time for lunch before settling down to watch the women’s final.

Jane and I had both been rooting for Marion Bartoli since she battled her way through to the Wimbledon finals in 2007, weird serve, non-stop jigging and all, until the great Venus Williams brought the dream to an end. And we were still rooting for her two years ago when Sabine Lisicki beat her in the quarter-finals 6-4, 6-7, 6-1.

(click here to read more about going to Wimbledon in earlier years)

I anticipated a similar victory for Lisicki this time round. After all, hadn’t she routed the apparently invincible Serena in the quarter-final.  But Jane, maybe thinking of how our Marion had made young Flipkens look like an amateur in the semi-final, simply said that the French woman would win in straight sets, no questions asked.  And so it turned out. Bartoli ruthless and accurate; Lisicki tentative and tearful.  A dream of a match (unless you were German, that is).

The only thing wrong was that young Amelie, a few days off her 5th birthday, failed to share our enthusiasm.  She couldn’t understand that we were proving unwilling to admire her constant changes of costume, from Pirate Princess to Fairy Queen, often displayed for our delectation and delight against the background of the television.  After all, we only saw her every month or so, and she was used to us paying her a lot of attention.

“Don’t worry”, said my son-in-law Gerry next morning when we expressed some concern about the risk that our enjoyment of the men’s final would be somewhat disrupted by the antics of a lively young grand-daughter; “Just put her in front of a series of Shrek DVDs and you won’t hear a squeak out of her”.  And off they went to Centre Court.

So, later on, as Murray and Djokovic started knocking up I headed upstairs with Amelie, popped the first disc into the player and turned on the TV. That at least was the intention.  Whatever buttons were pressed or knobs twisted the screen stayed resolutely blank. I’d checked in advance with Gerry how things worked just to avoid this kind of panic; and panic it was turning into, until I realised that she would be just as happy watching it on my laptop.

Two problems, however.  Firstly, the keyboard proved quite tempting and, half a dozen times, I was summoned upstairs to remove whatever oddities her inquisitive little fingers had summoned up, obscuring her view of the screen. And, secondly, I hadn’t brought a cable with me, with the result that - on the 7th or 8th time that I had to head upstairs, early in the third set - it was to see a message pointing out that the machine was running on reserve battery power.

All right, in an ideal world we wouldn’t have chosen to watch the famous 77-year wait for a new British Wimbledon champion come to an end with a fashion show in the back (and sometimes even fore) ground.  But, despite that, it was a great performance, a great match and an unforgettable day. And, bless her, Amelie does make a pretty good Pirate Princess.