"The Queue": our Evening at Wimbledon

 Hello friends!


This past week was spent in London where we both worked during the days (me at the archives and Graham at a small card table he set up in our gracious host's sitting room) and then took advantage of wonderful wonderful London in the evenings.





On Monday we had a lovely meal with our friends Chris and Liz.  So great to catch up and eat delicious food. 


Tuesday we went to see Chekhov play called Seagull at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston.  It was excellent.  Also, excellent was the fact that Keira Knightley and her family were in the front row watching her father play the uncle.  It was fun to see a movie star in real life but the best part of it was that everyone left her completely alone all evening.  Made me proud to be English!


Wednesday we met at Waterloo Station after work and took a commuter train to Wimbledon to try to get grounds tickets.  Grounds tickets are available during the first few weeks of the tournament to anyone willing to stand in "The Queue".  That's right, this is not just any old line-up but an official Queue with special Queue marshals, an official Queue card which tells you your number in The Queue and provides details of the rules you are expected to abide whilst in The Queue.  We also received a specific Queue brochure with more information about the tournament, etc.  Intense!  


I should mention that we didn't take part in the most extreme form of Wimbledon queue, which involves bringing your own tent and camping overnight in order to get a whole day grounds ticket.  We were after the less sought after 'evening' grounds ticket  


But back to The Queue itself.  Oh what a Queue it was.  Our adventure began when we arrived at what we thought was the main entrance only to find out that it was only entrance #9 which plebs like us would not be allowed into.  As we walked around the outside of the grounds it quickly became apparent that it would be quite some time before we'd be mixing with the special people of entrance #9.  About 1 km after entrance #9 we finally arrived at the pre-entrance to The Queue.  This section wound partway through a golf course (I'm not joking) before we entered the official Queue area, with Queue cards in hand.  Once in the official Queue we moved further down the golf course, over a small bridge and then finally through a covered walkway to the ticket booths.  

At the beginning of the official Queue with my official Queue card.

We had hoped to arrive at Wimbledon by about 6:00pm but being too cheap to take the shuttle bus from the station we were delayed by having to walk half an hour uphill to the grounds and then of course the unexpected formality of The Queue also put us back a bit.  However, luck was on our side and we were actually successful in getting tickets (can you imagine if we hadn't been!) and finally entered the grounds at about 7:45pm.  

The Wimbledon grounds are very impressive.  

oooooo, aaahhhhhh

so green!

We had free access to courts 3-19 and watched some impressive junior and senior doubles matches.  The courts are slightly raised and the seating is only about three rows deep so everyone has an amazing view of the play.

This is the only pic we have of a regular court so just add people, players and a net to the background of this photo.

Murray Hill (a big screen of centre court)

Purple flowers everywhere + the obligatory Rolex clock

 After watching some junior matches for a little while we suddenly remembered that we could try to buy some resale tickets for the bigger courts.  For £5 each (which goes to charity) we got tickets to Court 1 where Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport were playing Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva.  I was especially excited because tennis doubles is the only team sport that I've ever played (and yes Stephanie, feel free to make a cruel jab at me for that in the comments section).  Unfortunately we only got to see them play the last few minutes of their match but we were only a few rows away and the atmosphere was great.

Centre court!  Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport  in chairs on the right

End of the match

Martina waving goodbye to me.

They are growing vines all over the new stadiums to make them prettier, it totally works.

Have you ever seen such nice displays at a sports venue?

The matches were all over by about 9:10pm so we grabbed a "Duchee" (sausage hotdog) from one of the food stands and then made our way back to the tube station to head home.  

What a fun day!