Anyone for tennis?
The sound of grunting, punnets of strawberries at eight quid a pop and middle class people sleeping rough and queuing like refugees at a border post can only mean one thing – the start of Wimbledon.
Tennis is the most middle class game in the world. Before you have a racquet, ball or any kind of skill, you have to have a decent washing machine or at least a tub of water and a shedload of bleach because this is a game played in whites. At least it is at the all-England tennis club and I suspect the reason behind this is because, well, if you allow aged male duffers to set the dress code, then white sensible knickers combined with micro-skirts is going to be the result.
Wimbledon is soaked in tradition, and usually rain. By tradition, this sport sees the great British hope pluckily get through a couple of matches before they meet somebody good, or Australian, and then they are pounded into the court in a chalk-dust raising display of home-turf humiliation.
Tennis, though, isn’t really an English game. Okay, it was invented here and so on, but like a middle class family, it’s emigrated. Football is the same, except that like a criminal, it was deported. In the case of Football it went to South America and became a religion. As for tennis, it’s now played more on the Continental courts of those with a second home is France, or in Australia, where the clay surface was invented, or as I believe it’s termed, the outback.
One thing is for sure, the ground may not be saturated (yet) but the telly coverage is. And I don’t really mind this to be honest – there’s something therapeutic about the light green, the gentle thwock thwock noise and the occasional grunt or trouser cough of a straining athelete.
There’s only one thing that’s slightly disquieting – the muscles on the women players, and the way they tuck their spare balls into their knickers.
Tennis is the most middle class game in the world. Before you have a racquet, ball or any kind of skill, you have to have a decent washing machine or at least a tub of water and a shedload of bleach because this is a game played in whites. At least it is at the all-England tennis club and I suspect the reason behind this is because, well, if you allow aged male duffers to set the dress code, then white sensible knickers combined with micro-skirts is going to be the result.
Wimbledon is soaked in tradition, and usually rain. By tradition, this sport sees the great British hope pluckily get through a couple of matches before they meet somebody good, or Australian, and then they are pounded into the court in a chalk-dust raising display of home-turf humiliation.
Tennis, though, isn’t really an English game. Okay, it was invented here and so on, but like a middle class family, it’s emigrated. Football is the same, except that like a criminal, it was deported. In the case of Football it went to South America and became a religion. As for tennis, it’s now played more on the Continental courts of those with a second home is France, or in Australia, where the clay surface was invented, or as I believe it’s termed, the outback.
One thing is for sure, the ground may not be saturated (yet) but the telly coverage is. And I don’t really mind this to be honest – there’s something therapeutic about the light green, the gentle thwock thwock noise and the occasional grunt or trouser cough of a straining athelete.
There’s only one thing that’s slightly disquieting – the muscles on the women players, and the way they tuck their spare balls into their knickers.
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