It’s a very rare occasion when I have to wear a tie these days. In Parliament it was a requirement. A gentleman (the loose description for male MPs) could not enter the chamber of the House of Commons without a tie, or a jacket for that matter. The rules have eased a little these days in Westminster but not at the Probus Club of Barnes and Mortlake.

I agreed to attend their main lunch of the year principally to wallow in nostalgia: Barnes was where I became a postman exactly 55 years ago and before that I stacked shelves at a supermarket called Anthony Jackson’s on the Upper Richmond Road in Mortlake.

Barnes Sorting Office is now a mixed residential/community space and the Anthony Jackson store is a Vets4Pets. Here I am with Ian Lamb, the urbane Chairman of Probus. The lunch was lovely and lots of books were purchased by the elderly attendees who once may well have been my customers!