Events

[shermarama]

We went to Wimbledon on Friday. I've watched lots of Wimbledon every year from younger than I can remember, but I'd never been to the thing itself. It was probably the worst day of last week to pick in terms of weather, although it made the most sense in terms of days off.

I had a squint around on the net for an idea of how early we'd have to be there to get a ground pass and there wasn't much in the way of advice; one site for Aussie sports fans recommended getting there by 8, so we did that. The early morning was lovely and sunny, so we sat in the sun in this very civilised and organised queue, read the morning papers, helped the lads next to us with the crossword (Actor, six letters beginning with E, surname Woodward; I mean, what?) and felt quite smug - we were easily early enough, being something like number 3900 in the queue, and hadn't got up violently early to do it. By 10 they had us stood up and doing the final queueing leg, where people kept giving us free foodstuffs including strawberries, and by 10.45 we were through the rather paranoid security search and into the ground.

It turns out to be a dinky little place. I was suprised how small the viewing areas around the non-show courts were, being no more than a single row of benches by some of them. The two main courts are huge, of course, but since we didn't get in those (although we could have done, we were offered tickets for no. 1 court on the turnstiles, but didn't bother) they didn't seem like part of the same place. Although the weather after mid-morning was mostly a bit rubbish, seeing everything knocked down and watching people scurrying for cover when it started raining was kind of all part of the experience, and it only caused about an hour's delay in total. The last match of the day was definitely fighting against bad light, what with the overcast, and one of the players was getting quite shirty about it, but they kept going til it was done at about 9.15.

So we watched two pairs of British players win at mixed doubles, astonishingly, as well as watching some bits of the show matches on the big screen, while drinking nice beer (they let you bring a moderate amount of beer in with you, which is quite unexpected in the modern world of revenue protection) and eating sandwiches, and now when I see bits of the place on telly it's nice to have a feel of what's where. Worth taking a day off for, and next year I think I'll apply for the ticket ballot and see what I can get.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Both of the times I've been I've queued up for a post-5pm ground pass - still plenty of tennis to be seen and totally worth it! As innocent young impoverished student lasses we also managed to sweet-talk dudes who were leaving the show courts into giving us their day-passes (and vaguely blagging that we had got them from the resale stand) and OMG supertennis on No1 court etc! Before Wimbledon I'd never been to another big sporting event (swimming doesn't count) so being in a big arena like that was proper breathtaking.