Friday's trip

A short hair cut

Thanks to a late night I was reasonably well prepared for my 9am departure to catch a train across south west England. All that I needed to do was eat breakfast, pack one item off the washing line and prepare a picnic for the train. Getting up at 8am gave me plenty of time to stay on schedule. That was until Matt decided that he wanted his hair cut. In fairness, I’ve been saying for a few weeks that he should get a haircut but up until today he’d been more tolerant of it than me. Our usual hairdresser, Katherine, being unavailable, the only course of action was for me to test my hairdressing skills. I was keen to use the kitchen scissors but Matt was insistent that I used his beard trimmer (he doesn’t really have a beard). 20 minutes later Matt was considerably de-haired (more de-haired than had been the original intention, but it was at least even) and I was no longer on schedule. We were both covered in lots of small bits of ginger hair.

I didn’t think that the schedule would permit me a shower to remove the small bits of ginger hair from my person, but in actual fact I made it to the station with plenty of time to spare. I was even able to position myself on the platform in anticipation of my allocated seat. Here I observed some teenage boys indulging in the peculiar practice of spraying deodorant all over themselves. They have clearly not yet learnt about the biology of sweat but I resisted indicating to them the parts of their body that would better benefit from the application of deodorant.

Phase one of my trip to Southampton Central station passed uneventfully. My allocated seat was in the quiet carriage. It wasn't very quiet but I didn't mind. A rather haughty sounding woman did mind and made an unofficial announcement that could everyone please keep the volume down. Which was mostly met with barely disguised sniggers of laughter from the rest of the carriage.

Phase two was so uneventful that I even managed a little snooze. That was until Sherbourne, when a posh couple boarded. At least they seemed posh to me. They had a rather dilapidated shopping trolley from which they extracted their picnic packaged in bags from a high end supermarket before precariously shoving it into the overhead stowage. The woman was pleasingly eccentrically (sorry about the double adverb use) dressed:

• bum-bag - which wasn't removed or ventured into at all
• sunglasses - even though she wasn't in the sun
• sunhat - even though she wasn't in the sun
• headphones - even though she was relentlessly talking the whole time
• elastic band around her wrist

Her picnic seemed to consist of lettuce leaves freshly plucked from a lettuce, which she did not pause in her talking to masticate. I felt rather sorry for the young lady from Jersey who happened to be sat next to them who did remarkably well whilst they argued about how she could best get to Regent Street (I think they thought that she'd never ventured onto public transport before). The posh lady wasn't wrong when she described the countryside through which we were traversing as ravishing though.

My tiffin

It wouldn't affect me, but there was much consternation when it was announced that the train wouldn't be stopping at Clapham Junction - apparently it was too hot. I just had time eat my picnic, which due to the morning's time constraints consisted of the leftovers from the day before's tea (sweet potato, mushroom and spinach curry). I don't know what the posh lady would have to say about this as she was now in full swing about her tea the day before:

• fish pie in which she couldn't find any fish
• meringue which surely wasn't made with free range eggs
• and if they could afford such good wine why couldn't they have organic potatoes?

With one stop to go, the train was ominously stationery. It was hot on the train and I was uncomfortable from all the little bits of ginger hair all over me. Apparently someone had driven into a bridge (apparently this is creatively called bridging) so we would have to take a slight detour. Still, I was only 10 minutes later than scheduled and hadn't kept my dad waiting too long.

Before heading home, dad kindly agreed that we could pop into the shops. It was a successful mini-trip as I bought no more and no less than had been intended (apart from a possibly unnecessary purchase in a large toiletry store to use up a voucher).

Dad's driving was funny, he kept insisting on pointing out various highway regulations both to me and other drivers (imagine a finger pointing at the speed limit sign).

Stag beetle - spotted whilst walking

After catching up with my friend Katie, it was time I made my way down the road to the Waterside Arts Festival event: "Jazz at the Grove". I was to join my parents and all my aunts and uncles (at least all those that I know about), and was to bring my mother-in-law's Yorkshire terrier, Fred, who is temporarily residing with my mum and dad. It was a very pleasant evening for the 1.7mile walk; unfortunately Fred didn't agree and refused to walk any further after less than 0.1miles. This meant that I had to carry him the rest of the way in his special carrying bag. I suppose he can be forgiven as he is 14 years old (which possibly makes him 98 in dog years although I always thought that whole thing was a bit dubious), but I think a few car accidents were only narrowly avoided as people gawped at me while I walked along with him cradled at my bosom - I have found this to be the most comfortable and secure way to carry a small dog. 

Monday's gardens

My third day in south London, and as all my friends (or the ones in the vicinity) were working I had to entertain myself. But first I had to transport myself. It was a fairly short trip involving 2 trains and a bus. But I had brushed up my London transport skills over the previous few days and was feeling confident. I think that looking confident (whether or not you feel it) is an important factor in avoiding pick-pockets. One unfortunate lady immediately made herself vulnerable as she failed to "mind the gap" and lost a shoe down said gap whilst boarding the train. Her husband seemed to want to try to reclaim the shoe but she wanted to buy some new ones. I'm sure they ultimately went for the wise option in not delving around under the train (although it does seem a rather extreme way of getting a new pair of shoes), but they made themselves very conspicuous.

Anyway, I duly arrived at Kew Gardens. My first impression was that there were a lot of coach parties of:

1.    School children

2.    Foreign tourists

I was a bit concerned that I would get caught up with these. In actual fact I managed to mostly avoid them, with the exception of some probably year 7s drawing pineapples in the lily house.

A pineapple

A lily

After my quick trip to the lily house I think I mostly avoided the parties by avoiding the most popular attractions in the first part of the day. With the assistance of the excellent touristical map (including both a north marker and a scale) I headed off in the direction of the Mediterranean garden. It smelt wonderful and I spotted a few things that I thought might be possibles for our front garden: Genistra tinctoria, Santolina chamaecyparissus and Cistus laurifolius.

Santolina chamaecyparissus

Cistus laurifolius

It was one of those days that whatever you’re wearing it’s not quite right for the weather. I had opted for trousers and a thin jumper but when the sun came out this was too hot. But if I’d gone for something lighter I would have been too cold. Even now it was slightly cool when the sun wasn’t blaring down. So in what looked like it might be a prolonged period of cloudiness (it wasn’t the sun came back really quickly) I went into the temperate greenhouse. In the sun I would say that it was actually rather hotter than temperate. The greenhouse is due to close next month for significant preservation work and I found my walk around interesting from the point of view of preparations for this – various demarcations in bright paint and the removal of various plants to a secure part of the greenhouse. You can see why this building is grade 1 listed; architecturally I found it quite beautiful. The best plant was a caper.

Caper plant

Temperate greenhouse

Tree-top walkway
(from the ground)

Since I last visited Kew (which must have been at least 10 years ago on a really hot day) they have installed a treetop walkway. Here I did run into a small group of school children who were mainly interested in walking the “wrong” way around the walkway and seeing how much they could make it wobble. It being the summer the view from the walkway was not really that interesting – consisting mostly of green leaves. I imagine it would be beautiful in the autumn. I does realise just how high these trees are – 108 steps.

I stopped for lunch by a pond. This seemed to be a nice spot where I could watch some moorhens (or maybe coots – I can never remember which ones have the white beaks) make their nests and there were plenty of benches. I could hear a peacock so my picnic was slightly impeded by my concerns that it would want to coming after my food (this happened at the zoo once). I needn’t have worried. I should have put my energy into worrying about the ducks who were much more interested and actually required me to vacate my bench for fear of picnic nick-age.

My highlights of the afternoon were:

1. The stag beetle loggery – stag beetles are one of my favourite childhood insects. Sadly I didn’t see any today.

2. Ice-cream – I had a little mid-afternoon break to make up for my duck-shortened lunch. I love ice-cream and this did not disappoint: coffee + honey and walnut.

3. The gravel garden – this gave me yet more inspiration for our front garden. I am definitely going to try some Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’ – it was really popular with the bees.

4. Roses – I love smelling them. Today I particularly loved smelling the orangey-yellow ones which have got a lovely sort of sherbet-citrus aroma like ‘Lady of Shallot’ and ‘Lady Emma Hamilton’. It made me wonder about what the different chemical composition of the various rose smells is, and whether a friendly analytical chemist could help me out with this conundrum.

Lady of Shallot

Ice-cream break

Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’

By 5.30pm I had seen most of what I had wanted to see. There was still an hour before closing time and when I was due to meet my friends for tea so I redeployed my touristical map and headed off for the one major attraction that I had missed: the compost heap. Unfortunately what the touristical map doesn’t tell you is that the compost heap is out-of bounds to the general public so I had to make do with a distant view and a poor quality photo. Oh well.

The compost heap from a distance

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.

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.

Fleming and Murray made it to the 3rd round

We stayed to watch the end of that match before heading off to find our seats on Centre Court.