Wimbledon 2006: out!



The Debenture Adventure

Now here's a turn-up. Yesterday I had a call from Lesley Douglas's office. She's the controller of Radio 2 and 6 Music. She's my boss twice. She had two complementary BBC tickets for Wimbledon and would I like them? Now I'm not bothered about tennis, but Julie is tennis mad, and I could see the appeal of being at this most iconic of tennis venues on the second day of the grand slam, so I jumped at the chance. (Plus, it's almost local, and we can fill the skip on Wednesday.) Thus did we set off in the car this morning with our waterproofs packed and a faxed confirmation of our tickets to hand in at Gate 4. (It transpires that a batch of BBC tickets "went missing", so Wimbledon provided letters to cover duplicates, as the originals had to be voided.) Now I know it's suicide to try and park in Wimbledon during tennis fortnight, but even though I say so myself, we know the backstreets well, and had identified a residential street without restrictions or police bollards that was in 30 minutes' walking distance from the All England Lawn Tennis Club, so we parked and strolled. It was a breeze. And free. Just like the tickets. We were saving money with every minute that ticked by, which was lucky, as we shall see . . .

First, the venue. What a fabulous place to find oneself on a sunny day, so familiar from the establishing montages on the BBC and the view from the window behind the bit where Sue Barker and John Inverdale sit for the duration. It's huge. And even though you kind of know this stuff, it's still amazing to find yourself surrounded by so much tennis being played at one time. Never mind Centre Court, or Court One (where our seats were), there are courts everywhere! You can just wander into them. Not so the big two, where somewhat overqualified members of the armed services act as stewards and only allow you in or out between games and sets. This is very strict, but I like it - it's respectful to the players. Once you have established which "gangway" you're supposed to use, you get ushered to your seats by a sailor or an airman (green, plastic, fold-down, I've sat in bigger ones, but they could be worse), and the atmosphere is amazing. Our seats were at one end of the court, which was great, as it looked like it does on telly, and no turning your neck left and right to follow the action. (Though on a smaller scale, it reminded me of walking into Wembley Stadium for the first time when I was about 14, to see an England qualifier.) Heaven knows how exciting Centre Court must be! Even though I'm not interested in tennis, I was, by the time we sat down, really interested in tennis. How could you not be?



Our tickets. Once we had handed over our fax at the ticket office, all the while chaperoned by a young man in a blazer, it became clear that our tickets were debenture tickets. I don't really know what this means, but I know it's good. We got special depenture badges to pin to ourselves, and quickly sought out the special places where only debenturers can go. We only had an our hour before the first game started on Court One, so we flashed our paperwork and entered a pleasant looking debenture-only restaurant, already abuzz. We were, it should be stated for the record, wearing normal clothes: t-shirts, hooded top, long shorts and trainers in my case, cords and sandals in Julie's. However, we obviously didn't look like debenture people. The restaurant staff behind the desk tried to talk us out of going in there by explaining that they only served a fixed four-course meal with a fixed price (forty-nine pounds). Because we didn't have enough time to eat one of these big meals - and because it cost forty-nine pounds! - we didn't actually mind being advised to try the debenture lounge next door instead, where they serve normal food. We did mind the self-defeating nature of a restaurant where you can't eat as much or as little as you like, despite being rich enough to fork out fifty quid a head, but perhaps real debenture people like this kind of restaurant, and don't really want to watch the tennis. We did.



We flashed our badges again at the lounge, feeling a bit like first class passengers at an airport (ie. defiant but unwelcome). The restaurant serving normal food was on the first floor, and to gain access to it we had to show our debenture tickets again, this time to a woman at a lecturn, who looked us up and down as if perhaps we were wearing chimney sweep's clothes but kept on smiling. She regretfully informed us, as if perhaps breaking the news that a relative had died on the operating table, that jeans, trainers and shorts were not allowed in the restaurant. Then she read the backs of our tickets and established that it didn't specify this anywhere on them, so she reluctantly agreed to let us in. (Neither of us was wearing jeans. One of us was wearing cords, which are not jeans) We hid our indignance and thanked the lady kindly for her benevolence. Already this was feeling like the worst of England, which is a shame, because people come from far and wide to visit Wimbledon, thinking it a beacon of what this country is good at - lawns, politeness and fair play. But here's the punchline: the no-jeans, no-shorts, no-trainers restaurant for debenture holders only on the first floor of the exclusive lounge is ... a fucking cafeteria. Oh, a cafeteria that charges twenty quid a head, but no better than Cafe Revive at Marks & Spencer. In fact, worse, as, despite its mouth-watering menu of dishes as various as coronation lamb, rib-eye steak and smoked salmon, it actually only had cold, ready-plated food. The coronation lamb, which I chose, was cold, and it was meant to be! Never mind how smartly dressed the patrons of this cafe were, they still had to slide wooden trays along a rail and pick up plates from a chiller cabinet like ordinary mortals at a service station on the M1. Some of the people in there were wearing blazers and pressed shirts and shoes (stupid clothes for a hot day watching sport), but some of them were in comfortable footwear that could easily be described as trainers - and polo shirts are t-shirts with a collar. It's such a lot of self-aggrandising, know-your-place, tell-it-to-the-tourists, theme-park Upstairs Downstairs bullshit. We ate our substandard cold food, which we had carried to our own table, having paid almost forty quid between us, with the sour taste of the class system in our mouths. It didn't in any way spoil our day though. We were better than them. We knew it was an illusion of class, and not real class. Real class is to serve decent, fresh food at affordable prices to people who appreciate it. No wonder so many Wimbledon regulars bring packed lunches anyway.



Thankfully, our debenture tickets didn't mean special seats in a special enclosure with insecure people. They were normal seats, from which we thoroughly enjoyed the next three and a half hours of nailbiting tennis from Tim Henman, who's so famous, I've heard of him, and the much younger Swede, Robin Soderling, whose t-shirt might prevent him from getting in the debenture lounge as it had no collar. I used to watch the Wimbledon finals on telly as a teenager when Bjorn Borg was still in the frame and John McEnroe was coming through, but I've never really fancied it as a spectator sport, allowing Wimbledon to pass me by. Well, how wrong I've been. It's compulsive, especially courtside, as you can see every shot so clearly, where it's going, where it lands, and it's impossible not to get sucked in, even if you accept the received wisdom that Tim Henman is what's wrong with the sport: he's a boring, ungrateful, loveless bastard. Nevertheless, I found myself rooting for him over five sets, even when he pretty much gave the fourth one away. I was soon ooh-ing and ahh-ing and tutting as he hit the net or allowed Soderling to ace him. (See how I use the terminology now.) The crowd were mostly as quiet as a theatre crowd, and it was encouraging to be amongst. The occasional mobile phone beeped, but it was frowned upon, and when two ladies got up to leave, mid-game ("Seats please. Play continues!" grumbled the American umpire, who sounded like Stephen Hawking and pronounced "fifteen" in a special way that made it sound like "thirty"), everyone in the court looked at them disapprovingly. You see, that's about manners, not class. I liked it liked when certain vocal Henman fans called out, "Come on, Tim!" between points. It was oh so polite, as if perhaps they were saying, "Come on, Tim, come and have your photo taken!" or "Come on, Tim, pull yourself together!" The crowd seemed right behind him, although the Henmania of a few years back has abated. Flags are no longer waved in his po-faced honour. A couple of contested line calls had him giving evils to the line judge in question, which was rather childish. But anger is an energy and he was bristling in the fifth set, and deserved his hard-fought win.

Oh no, I like tennis, and it's all Lesley Douglas's fault. I haven't got time to watch Wimbledon!

We had a fantastic day. Even the debenture thing was an education. Wimbledon is a fine place, with lots of fine things going on within its barbed-wire perimeter, but good food isn't one of them. (Never mind Centre Court, you should see the Food Court! What an unholy scrum for plastic-packed sandwiches and fizzy drinks! Thwack! Advantage, processed food!) Probably an excellent place to get pissed on champagne or Pimm's, if you have the money. Best thing about Wimbledon? Lack of gaudy sponsorship on court. This is refreshing. All you get is a little Rolex logo on the clock, a little IBM logo on the computer that tells you how fast the ball is going (127mph at one point!) and two tiny Slazengers, which are behind a net. And that. apart from what's written on the balls, is pretty much it. Long may it remain in the hands of the BBC.



Sad tale: a lovely, polite, elderly German couple shuffled along our row just as Henman came on to rapturous applause, claiming to have tickets with our seat numbers on. The lady showed them to me and indeed, their tickets did say Row Q, Seats 242 and 243, Tues 27 June, Gangway 20. How could this be? And then I remembered why we had exchanged a fax for our tickets in the first place - the originals had "gone missing". I went down and checked with a nearby soldier and he confiremd that our duplicate tickets "had priority". He told me to send the Germans down to him, which I did, with some regret, as it was clear that their tickets must have been purchased from a tout, or a disreputable source, even an internet auction site. As it said on the back of our tickets, "Anyone attempting to use the original ticket should be escorted immediately to the Championship Ticket Office and will be liable to be ejected." Moral: buy your Wimbledon tickets from source, even if it involves camping on the path. (I hope the staff were nice to the German couple, whose day was ruined.)

Numb from three and a half hours of sitting on green plastic, we made our way back to the car at about 5pm, having had a good wander up Henman Hill and past more concessions selling pricey booze, strawberries and "pies and pasties". It was a terrific game, and a unique experience (Julie hadn't been since she was a teenager and it was all fields and Jimmy Connors and lax security in those days), and what better way to finish it off than to eat Thai food in our favourite restaurant in Wimbledon village - that's hot, freshly-cooked, healthy, delicious food at just over twenty quid a head, and it was brought to our table by splendid people, and included prawn crackers. Compare and contrast. I must look up the word debenture right now. I think it might mean deluded.

World Cup 2006: in!
Back from the restaurant in time for the France Spain kick-off. Missed Brazil Ghana.



Brazil 3 Ghana 0
History made. Ronaldo became the highest-ever goal-scorer in World Cup history, bypassing Gerd Muller's tally with his 15th. Adriano's was the 200th World Cup goal for Brazil, another one for Norris McWhirter. Ghana were apparently sloppy in defence, but not a complete pushover.
France 3 Spain 1
What a show. This is how a quarter final should work: both teams fired up and attacking, a number of goals, nothing like a foregone conclusion, no need for extra time or penalties. Had it not been for the usual diving and amateur dramatics, this might have been a perfect game of international football. I like both sides, but plumped for France. I like their average age (29.5 years old, five years older than Spain), and the fact that Zidane comes with so much added drama, and I can even let them off the daft collars on their white strip. Spain took the lead early on with a neat penalty from David Villa, but the equaliser was a corker, from the skin-graft kid, Franck Ribery, who beat one goalkeeper and two defenders to slot one home, as I believe they say, in the 41st. That meant both teams came out fighting after half-time. The fireworks didn't go off though until the last six minutes. Vieira headed one past Casillas in a goalmouth kerfuffle, which actually came off defender Ramos but it was going in anyway. That was in the 84th. Then, in the 92nd, a minute after being booked, Zidane provided one of the goals of the tournament so far, for my money. And what a strange hairline he has. And stubble longer than his newly-shaved hair. L'advantage, France!