It's Wimbledon season! And this time around, we actually live much closer (like a 30 minute walk) to the grounds! So, after I finished work on Friday (I'm now on Summer Holidays, YEAH!!!) I headed home and tidied up the flat so that Jess could come over! She went to the Protocol boat party, then headed over but we didn't get to bed until midnight... So we got less than 4 hours of sleep before getting up at 3:45.
We left the house around 4:30 and walked to the Queue, which unfortunately means going the long way around the park but meant that we arrived around 5:15am. We got our queue cards and guides and joined the queue! We were numbers 03551, 03552, and 03553, which is better than Jess had last year on the Saturday (8th July), but worse than when I went on the 7th last year (which was a Friday). There wasn't much playing games in the queue, we were all so tired after the week (and in my case, going out on Friday to celebrate the summer holidays!), so we mostly just chatted and napped until te morning was up. We first moved about 7:30 to squish up the queue after all the tents had been packed away, then again at 9:00 when the queue started to move out of the field. By 9:30 we were moving properly and the queue moved faster than I remembered from last year. Queue highlights included free swag - strawberries from the Estee Lauder team and a free tennis ball jam doughnut from Doughnut Time and Amazon Prime (I'm sure they'd want me to tell you that the US Open is exclusively live on Prime in return for that delicious doughtnut!)
We were at the main gates and getting our tickets by 11 - we had hoped to maybe get a Centre Court seat between us, but there were only grounds tickets left by that point. That was fine, we'd sussed out the draw while in the queue and headed to Court 3 (after getting ourselves a program of course) to watch Ashleigh Barty (an Australian) play in the ladies singles. She was playing Daria Kasatkina, and was doing really well in the beginning of the first set - until towards the end of it she was broken against. Unfortunately, that was the beginning of the end for her, as she never really recovered from that break and lost 7-5 6-3.
Then we decided it was lunch time as it was almost 1pm. We picked up lunch from one of the food areas (burgers and chips for Richard and Jess, chicken teriyaki for me, with lots of cold drinks) and sat on the Murray Mound to watch Nadal playing on the big screen while we ate.
After that we decided it would be a good time to go for a wander, browse the shop and do a few other things. We started with the shop, and picked up a few souvenirs - a Gentlemen's Championship towel for Richard, a mini sports towel for us (now our hand towel in the bathroom), and the mini candle set (3 - fresh cut grass, strawberries and fizz, and english rose scented) for me. Richard also got a special plastic beer glass which he got with beer in it from the bar and brought home. Then it was just before 3pm, at which time 2 things happen - resale tickets for Centre Court and Courts 1 and 2 go on sale, and they have a sale of used championship balls (as in, the balls that go away when the call 'new balls' and make the ball changes!). So Richard stayed in the ball resale queue, and Jess and I went to the ticket resale queue. We had only just arrived though, when they said that there weren't any, and to come back at 6pm. Oh well. So we rejoined Richard and bought a can each (one for us, one for Jess) of used championship balls. They are labelled with 'Slazenger Wimbledon 2018' on them, and even had bits of authentic Wimbledon grass attached to some!!! They even come in a specially branded tin. We have decided to set aside 1 of the 3 balls to be a permanent souvenir, and the other 2 are going to be special cat toys!
Then we picked up some strawberries and cream (free to HSBC cardholders like myself and Jess), and headed to Court 6, but the queue was massive. So we went to Court 18 instead where there was another Australian lady playing. Daria Gavrilova (#26 seed) was playing against Aliaksandra Sasnovich from Belarus. It wasn't a close match (6-3, 6-1), but was still interesting to watch, especially to see someone get aggressive. Gavrilova threw her racquet, challenged a call, and even got an obscenity warning before the match was over!
That was the last match scheduled for that court, but there were extra matches on the schedule. These matches are apparently not given to any particular court, but filled in as courts are finished for the day. Richard was keen on seeing some Men's Singles, but we didn't want to move courts as we had good seats, so instead we stayed as Men's Doubles was on next! It was a fabulous match - Brits Liam Broady and Scott Clayton against Maximo Gonzalez and Nicholas Jarry (both from countries in South America). It was really good tennis - fast paced and exciting. There were a few body hits, challenged calls which were correct, and at one point the umpire overruled a linesperson. Unfortunately one of the body hits was on Liam Broady's wrist, and after taking a medical timeout and playing a few more games, they withdrew from the match, ending it early. Score was 7-6 (6-4) 6-3 1-2 when they retired, which was a shame.
By that point, it was after 6pm, and we were all shattered. None of the outside courts had any good matches left, and we didn't want to sit back on the Mound with everyone else, so we decided to head home. We were too hot to walk so we ended up catching an Uber home and getting straight into a cold shower! It was 31 and we spent most of the day sitting in the sun, so it was a very hot and sweaty day, but the strict application of sunscreen made sure that nobody got sunburnt and we all had a lovely day. You do sleep well after a day like that though! What a brilliant day - and next year, bring on Wimbledon 2019!!!
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