I knew I was right about private schools

The Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament has become an annual fixture in the Young household. Known as ‘Wimbledon-on-Sea’, the week-long competition takes place on the Norfolk coast in August and attracts hundreds of entrants. I’m not a contestant myself, but my two youngest are and five years ago my wife won the ladies’ doubles, meaning she’s now much in demand with the Norfolk silver foxes hoping to enlist her as their mixed doubles partner in the junior vets. This year she got as far as the semi-finals, which pleased the 59-year-old KC she was playing with, and was the runner-up in the women’s round robin.

Don’t be fooled into thinking Caroline is Hunstanton’s answer to Annabel Croft. Yes, the tournament is played on grass, but that’s where its resemblance to Wimbledon ends. Anyone can enter, which means the standard is variable. My 15-year-old son Charlie was astonished to discover he was seeded, having done respectably last year, only to be knocked out in the second round. In the mixed doubles, 16-year-old Freddie was assigned a partner who’d never picked up a racket before.

The tournament is both professionally organised and unpredictable, which is part of its charm. Contestants are expected to suppress their inner John McEnroe. There are no umpires, so good sportsmanship is at a premium. What’s striking about it is not the quality of the tennis, but the fact that it’s so Sloaney. In 2002, Tatler listed Hunstanton as a mainstay of the summer season, and it attracts hordes of privately educated teenagers, who refer to it as ‘Hunst’n’. For the duration of ‘tennis week’, the locals batten down the hatches, hoping the packs of drunken youths sweeping through the coastal villages after midnight, looking like extras in The Walking Dead but with costumes by Jack Wills, will pass by without setting fire to their wheelie bins or urinating in their front gardens.