It’s hard to admire gen Z without a twang of discomfort. They present qualities – strength under pressure, maturity, humility – that the middle aged should have nailed down
When Mr Z wakes up earlier than me, which is always, it’s my habit when I stir to ask him what is going on in the world. My plan is to trick him into feeling like an all-seeing Hermes character (the god, not the delivery firm), rather than a man who married someone really lazy.
When this happened on Sunday, he told me: “Everyone’s talking about Emma Raducanu.” I knew she had won the US Open already because we had had a late night. I would have known anyway; the build up to the match had a fairytale quality. She was so young and her potential victory so laden with significance – the first British woman to win a grand slam singles title since Virginia Wade, 44 years ago – that it had taken on an air of inevitability, at least to those of us who didn’t have to do anything but watch.