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Published: June 29th 2008
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Strawberries and Cream
How one knows one is at Wimbledon. There are few things more exciting than waiting at the airport to pick someone up. I love being part of the crowd and watching the reunions as people get off planes. As I am always standing at the international arrivals, one sees some very moving things. On Friday morning, I was waiting for Mom and Lynn to arrive and got to see quite a few of these scenes. Turns out that immigration at Gatwick was backed up and the queue snaked forever. It took them an hour and half to get through and I was beginning to think I had somehow missed them. Just as I was about to page, they walked through the set of double doors, not exactly smiling. After huge hugs, we solved the stress problem with a good cup of coffee to drink on the train back into town.
After a relatively quiet afternoon, we sat outside the Colonnade for drinks and then made our way to Red Pepper, my local Italian, for dinner. We had purposely had a quiet night in anticipation of the big day ahead.
Saturday dawned bright and clear and the BBC was promising more of the same. As it turned
Lunch
Me, Michael, Tori, Jeremy, Lynn and Mom. out, it was the perfect day to spend at a tennis match. The sun was shining, but we were in the shade and a breeze kept things from getting too hot. With coffee to go in hand, Mom, Lynn, Jeremy and I piled into our taxi ready to head south of the river. We picked up Michael and Tori at their flat and made our way to the All England Club to watch one of the four major tennis tournaments of the year.
We arrived at the Wimbledon Club in good time for champagne (one knows it's going to be a good day when glasses of champagne start arriving at 10.30!) and canapes while we sat in the sun and watched some less than professionals play tennis around us. Lunch was very early, but that was not a bad thing as two glasses of bubbles on a morning stomach could do with some food! The meal was delicious and, for once, we got to choose what we ate. Several glasses of wine later, we made our way over to Centre Court to begin the day in earnest.
Our seats were magnificent - 10th row and down towards one
The Wimbledon Club
Where we ate lunch. end so that we could watch the matches without straining too hard. We spent the day watching the tennis, drinking Pimms and occasionally getting up to walk around the grounds. The layout of the club is wonderful. One can just pop in and out of the various courts, so it is possible to watch many different matches over the course of the afternoon. I tended to stick with Centre Court, but Mom and Lynn took advantage of all that was on offer.
Late in the afternoon, we fulfilled the one thing that everyone must do when attending Wimbledon and partook in strawberries and cream. It was actually very nice and went down a treat with the Pimms!
We had decided that we were going to stick it out until the last ball had been hit. However, the last match we were watching was going on and it was getting late. Realising that we had to choose between watching the end of the match and eating dinner, we decided that a meal was in order as lunch, by this time, had been about nine hours ago. We climbed back into our taxi and headed back into town. We listened
to the rest of the match on the radio and were glad we had made the decision we had as the match ended about 25 minutes after we left. By leaving early, we missed the huge crush of people all coming out at once.
We landed at a pub not far from our neighbourhood called the Chepstow. A nice bottle of wine while the six of us discussed at length what we should do about dinner. Deciding that we were starving, we went for a Greek meze. For those of you who are uninitiated into this ritual, it is a true feast that goes on for a bit and has more food than should be allowed on one table at one time. We ate and ate and ate and drank more wine. By the end, the six of us were in a bit of food coma, but no longer hungry!
Wimbledon was the second of my summer events that I have been doing since I no longer have to worry about whether or not the timings clash with my job. Jeremy and I were discussing the merits of Ascot versus the merits of Wimbledon to decide which we
Centre Court
The view back to London proper. had liked better. We decided that they are so different, it is like comparing apples to oranges - or apples to strawberries.
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