Wimbledon

Aside from being the name of my branch of the District Line, Wimbledon is also apparently the name of a major tennis tournament, handily accessible via my line of the District Line. Not at the Wimbledon or Wimbledon Park stops, mind you, but word on the street is that it's at Southfields. Anyways, that's the not the point. The point is that is started on Monday, and that this is indeed a big deal.

Now the UK doesn't exactly have any 'good' tennis players (although I may get some objections to this), that doesn't stop them from getting all excited about the whole thing. The Wimbledon people are tricky you see, and the majority of tickets are available purchased on the day of play. Demand outstrips supply to such a degree that people camp overnight to try and get tickets. The good tickets get you into the good games, but there are also plenty of tickets that allow you to see random not very good people in far flung corners of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club.

Luckily, this camping aspect pretty much assures that I remain essentially unaffected by the whole thing, despite it only being 3 stops farther south. It does, however, seem to impact me in other ways. For example, BBC seems to think that everyone now wants to spend their evenings watching 'Today at Wimbledon', to which I say NO BBC, I want to spend my evening watching Britain's Youngest Grannies! Although now that I think about it, I believe they were both on BBC, just on different BBC channels...

There is also a need for people to discuss the tournament. Amongst things discussed: that none of the UK tennis players are any good, as well as rumors about the strawberries and cream or whatever they eat in there. And finally, people seem to have decided that tennis is worth playing. The last few times I've been to my local park, the 8 or so tennis courts have been packed by people who all seem to play much better tennis than me (which I must admit is not saying much!).

So we're only on day 3, and thinks have certainly not yet heated up (although Andy Murray did thankfully make it at least into the second round!), so we'll have to wait and see what things are like at this time next week!