Travelling Slow: Saturday's Wimbledon arrival

I had a much less eventful trip to London than on my previous visit, arriving in Paddington on schedule and showing unusual efficiency in making connections, to reach my friend, Alex's, nearly an hour earlier than the trip planner had suggested. I already knew that I wouldn't have as earlier a start as I had feared because Alex had been successful in securing us centre court tickets so we wouldn't have to chance our luck in "The Queue".

Nonetheless we departed from Alex's just gone 9 in an effort to get seats for an early prime match on an outside court. Alex set off at a determined quick march across south west London. I delayed things by:

1. Being slow at walking (in comparison to Alex particularly given the discrepancy in our leg length)

2. Dithering in the supermarket whilst selecting item(s) to augment our picnic. In the end I didn't properly make a decision and got quite a few naughty treats

We made it into the grounds and settled into some empty seats on court 2. Until a man (allegedly from the fire brigade) came along and told us that it was tickets only and that we'd have to move before play started. So we cut our losses and debated where we'd be best off. I managed to persuade Alex that a doubles’ match on court 16 might be worth a watch. Not only is doubles’ good fun, but it would probably be our only opportunity to cheer on some Brits. (I do hope that I’ve got the apostrophes in the right places there.)

We got some seats in the front row which was great apart from the occasional wayward ball and frustrated player causing me concern.

A front row view

I enjoyed watching the line judges and ball boys/girls close up. Of particular note the there was a line judge who had more than a passing resemblance to a Bond villain (actually quite a few of them did and they all had these little sponge bags in which I've no idea they carried which made them look even more suspicious) and a ball boy who was stood so upright that he looked like he was going to do himself an injury.

As for the tennis itself I didn't hold out much hope for the Brits. I have some sort of mental equation in which the size differential between the players is a significant factor in the outcome of the match (the bigger player having the advantage). And the average sized Brits were playing two enormous guys from Eastern Europe. It was a really entertaining match and the Brits did brilliantly, winning in straight sets. So my mental equation is obviously invalid.