My very efficient sister-in-law invited me to see The Bayeux Tapestry. This would have been sometime in July and the date, inked in my diary, was a little bit of definition in a period of the year I find hard to define. Heatwaves now seem impossible. The harvest – hot, quick, with perfect grapes – seems far behind us. The grass is green. I am eyeing up the heating controls. But the clocks have not yet changed, you can still walk at 5pm and when I went to The British Museum last week, I set off in Autumnal gloom to find London was so hot I envied those with bare legs.

Having read about the nightmarish queues we arrived half an hour early. Approaching the door to the exhibit, the young assistant assured us that we didn’t need to queue. “I don’t know why these people are queueing” he said with exasperation, “you don’t need to queue. PLEASE” he begged, “Just come back at 4 and I’ll let you in.” Obediently we drifted away, some went to see the Rosetta Stone, others wandered round the gift shop - astonishing levels of tapestry related merch - before three of us took up a non-queuing stance in the middle of the space near, but not too near, the entrance.

But people began to queue behind us. We moved left. They moved left. We tried to explain we weren’t queueing, we were just chatting. We could hear the assistant was close to giving up: “what is WRONG with everyone,” he tried again, “PLEASE” his voice now high and hoarse, “can you STOP queueing.” We made “we’re trying not to queue” signs at him - because I always want to please anyone in authority - but queues kept forming. We broke our little group apart to prevent any possible notion of a queue. And then, when we moved towards the door at 4 o’clock, the women who had been behind us in our Not a Queue clearly thought we were queue barging.

It’s impossible not to get caught up in the atmosphere of almost sacred respect as you file past the tapestry. And just as impossible it turns out, not to fulfil the great British stereotype.