Wimbledon

Another outing for members of the collective, to Wimbledon for the day.

Not being members of the rich and famous or even the cognoscenti, this involved queueing for tickets so we had a very early start. Up at 4.30 am to drive to the Underground, then take the tube to Southfields, walk to Wimbledon and begin queueing. We arrived at 7.09 am and by 11.11 am were seated in Court No.12. Fortunately it was a nice day, I had an interesting book to read, and so the waiting went by fairly easily.

We watched a complete Ladies Singles match between Wickmayer and Kusnetsova, which was quite a good match and entertaining because Ms Wickmayer, a Belgian of Austrian descent, got very passionate and excitable. She made a most ridiculous noise every time she hit the ball: it sounded like she was saying a secret word, like 'omni'. See video below. The other noise you can hear is Kusnetsova who made this pathetic little 'euuurrr' sound in response to Wickmayer's 'omni'. Wickmayer emerged the victor.

Next up were Melzer and Tursanov, two Gentlemen who had to finish off their match from the previous day. Again, a good match although Melzer was clearly the better player, and won in the end. Tursanov was reliant solely on power rather than craft. By then we had been sitting down for four hours so decided to wander about a bit. The catch with that is by doing so, you lose your seat and will have to queue up all over again either there or elsewhere.

So we saw bits of other matches on the other courts here and there, got bumped into a lot by the general throng milling about, and discovered the extortionate prices in the Wimbledon shop and throughout the concession stands. Seven quid for a glass of Pimms, which was two-thirds ice, and £870 for an 'official' blazer. Caramba. Eventually, the rain came about 7 pm so we left and ended up at 'Ed's Diner' where some high-cholesterol grub was consumed with relish, coffee and a milk shake. Spiffing.

The Wimbledon chaps have got the whole thing well organised, and the stewards are awfully nice. Football clubs could learn a thing or two.