Saturday's centre court debut

We'd missed the first few games on Centre Court but got to our seats in a change of ends and hadn't missed anything significant in the first match. Even though our seats were four rows from the back we had a good view. That was until the person in front of us arrived.

Obscuring our view

He had very big hair and amazingly upright posture (maybe he used to be a ball boy) such that our view was almost entirely obscured if we sat in a comfortable position. So we had to adopt some slightly unusual poses to see the play. It wasn't helped by this chap's girlfriend (at least I assume it was his girlfriend) who kept leaning into him to kiss / cuddle / whisper in his ear so that the view to that side of his head was also frequently obscured. They would have been able to get a hotel room (even a nice one) for considerably less than their tennis tickets. Nonetheless we managed to arrange ourselves adequately to see and they made frequent                                                                           breaks from their seats for the loos / snacks.

As for Alex and I we were snack prepared. This had the dual benefit of:

1. Not having to pay the extortionate prices for snacks within the grounds

2. Not having to faff around getting out and in of seats and thus not missing valuable tennis

Our array of snacks included mostly refined carbohydrates but with some health benefits:

• cold pizza. Which had tomato sauce on it (a useful source of lycopene I believe) and spinach on it (a source of iron)
• oaty biscuits (fibre)
• strawberries (actually healthy - plenty of vitamin c and also some manganese)
• chocolate bar (the one mostly involving honeycomb so relatively low fat)
• crisps (I can think of nothing nutritionally redeeming about these but they taste so good).

(As an aside one of the doubles’ players was sponsored by one of my favourite type of crisp - particularly the crinkly salt and vinegar ones.)

However, the main health benefit in the above is clearly the energy supply which is after all the second most important thing about food (the most important is that it tastes good).

The snacks were accompanied by plenty of fluids. Mainly water but also a traditional English summer's alcoholic beverage - conveniently (and bargainously compared to the bar prices) pre-mixed in a can. Fortunately the toilet facilities were excellent. Although the combination of refined carbohydrate and ethanol did make us a little sleepy. I caught a snap of Alex having a mini-doze but she made me delete it.

A traditional snack

The tennis itself alternated between excellent matches and excellent players. We saw 2 closely fought battles and in the other matches both the men’s and ladies' number 1 seeds played phenomenally and basically annihilated their opponents. In the ladies' my size differential approach to tennis success held true.

Djokovic serving to success

Lisicki v. Stosur

Williams beats a gracious Date-Krumm 6-2, 6-0

I also enjoyed watching and being part of the crowd: spotting the crazy outfits and cheering on the underdogs.

Diverse spectators

I loved the hats

We weren't in a rush to leave when play had finished, having the distinct advantage of not needing any public (or indeed private) transport to get back to Alex's. So despite there being mess everywhere else I cleared up all our rubbish (separately as recyclables or non) before we descended out of Centre Court to make our way back across South West London. At a slower pace to that by which we had arrived.