Come on Tim!

There is an argument that the best way to enjoy any sport is to watch it on telly, especially if the coverage is on the BBC and so uninterrupted by adverts featuring models from the ‘ordinary looking people’ books of model agencies, i.e. ugly kids enthusing about chips. The best way to watch Wimbledon, I have always considered, is to pack a picnic, place the telly at the end of the bed and watch from beneath the comfort of a duvet, occasionally shaking the covers to remove pork pie crumbs. Tennis being a sport so dull that it’s best to watch it in conditions safe to doze off in.

Unless, that is, you are lucky enough to get tickets. This means that not only do you have the impetus to actually attend (f**king how much for a ticket?) but you don’t have to queue, the queue for tickets famously being like the ones normally associated with an Asda check out the week before Christmas, or outside a polling booth at a newly democratic country’s first free elections since the General was shot.

And Wimbledon is an experience. Forget the tennis, that’s the least of it. What you have is a sprawling complex, like a Village, which is clean and tidy and full of happy and courteous people. The person I went with described it as being ‘like an enormous Waitrose’ but I’d go even further and describe it as a place where the normal rules of Englishness are suspended, in that people speak to one another.

Moreover, in a world-turned-upside-down way, the ground staff are incredibly helpful. Not just polite, helpful. If they see a couple doing that thing where they squeeze together and the bloke holds the camera out, wishing he had the reach of a gibbon so he could get some more background in, a member of staff will offer to take the photograph and will not even attempt to run off with the camera. Can’t see the staff on my local railway doing that.

The Village is comprised of tennis courts and snack shacks and picnicking areas, and people wander from one to the other, gazing and grazing. My first impression was somewhat influenced by being hit by a tennis ball (on the elbow, where else) two minutes after stepping into the place, and I barely had time to consider whether it was worth recovering the thing as evidence to use to sue whoever the tosser was that couldn’t keep his serve inside a court, swiftly working out that anyone that crap at tennis would not be worth suing, even if they were playing at Wimbledon, when some blazered official swooped and ran off with it. I later learned that they sell the used tennis balls. I have yet to determine whether this is to legitimate tennis fans, or pandering to some hitherto undiscovered extreme form of fetishism.

Centre court itself is like a crucible. Sitting high and looking down, it resembled a cross between the Emirates Stadium, a boxing ring and a church. Make no mistake, this is the site of fierce sporting competition played out in a theatre the design of which has remained largely unchanged since the days of the gladiators, but the crowd here at least hush when somebody serves. And there are less lions.

Was there ever such a game? Even cricket doesn’t come with this much ritual, personnel and obscure rules and scoring attached to it. There is an umpire sitting in some sort of pulpit, there are line judges, there are ball boys and ball girls and looking over it all is the all-seeing ‘hawk-eye’. Oh, and a couple of players.

In this case, Victoria Azarenka and Serena Williams. Every time she exerted herself, Miss Azarenka made a noise like some sort of whooping bird, of the type that you would not wish to have nesting outside your bedroom window. She let out a whoop like a spooked mule and the crowd really did seem to enjoy it. She lost to Miss Williams, who looks like she was put together from off-cuts from Arnold Schwarzenegger and who merely grunted whenever she thrashed the ball.

As these two battled it out on the balding lawn of centre court, there were other distractions for the crowd. Sir Cliff Richard was in the royal box, tanned to the point of mahogany and proof that after a certain point cosmetic surgery can leave you looking like a cadaverous bull’s testicle, wearing the dodgiest syrup seen outside a puppet theatre.

As polite and relaxed (glasses and bottles chinked, cans hissed as they were opened) as the crowd were, a scene unfolded in front of us that resembled a Bateman cartoon that may well have been titled ‘The woman who took a mobile ‘phone call on Centre Court’. Never has a child so mastered the art of pretending not to be with the mother sitting right next to them as the boy in front of me did.

The English love an underdog and Tennis provides something of a tricky challenge for them as the upper hand in the game can go first one way and then the other. There were chants of ‘Come on Serena’, then ‘Come on Victoria’, then the occasionally drunken attempt at intimacy with ‘Come on Vicky’ and finally the crowd wag with ‘Come on Andy’. I resisted the temptation to bellow ‘Come on Tim!’ as being bottled to death by tennis fans as a result seemed a real possibility.

Everyone was turned out immaculately, the players even exhibiting style with two balls tucked into their pants. The Ralph Lauren styling however, makes the line judges look like sinister extras from The Great Gatsby.

More than the tennis, the day is about the experience. If it was all about the sport, the courts would be packed and the bars deserted. This was certainly not the case. But panama hats off to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, one is allowed to take in a picnic, including a ‘reasonable’ amount of booze, which was quantified this year as a bottle of wine per person. Notice that they did not mention spirits and in the spirit of making the most of the day by drinking heavily at lunchtime, I managed a half bot of champagne (Christ, I sound like Bertie Wooster), followed at various intervals by cans of ready-mixed gin and tonic or Pimms and lemonade. It made the whole thing very watchable.

But I don’t want to give the impression I put together an irresponsible picnic, I also packed several pork pies.