A Game to Love

So, I was in Tesco today, being sucked in by every marketing gimmick on the end of every aisle and therefore found myself buying the “A punnet of strawberries – Get the cream free!”. On arrival home I discovered the reason for this (besides strawberries being in season) – it is Wimbledon fortnight.

Wimbledon punctuates the end of the school year and the start of the summer. Growing up we took no notice of tennis in general – no notice of sport of any sort, really – but we watched Wimbledon almost obsessively. Our TV would become the focal point of a tangible Wimbledon fever – the only time when the phone ringing was religiously ignored and left to “the answer”. Did they not know we would be watching Wimbledon?

Memories… memories…

Hoping Martina Navratilova would win.

Getting bored of Martina Navratilova always winning.

I spent many summer days constructing a “watching the TV outside” kind of “light-break”. This would involve a lot of tartan rugs and a plastic table, an extension cable and the old black-and-white. Truth was, if you wanted to see a picture, you had to have your head in pitch darkness with TV in shadow – so your head would get really hot, while your legs would get burned, sticking out of the curtain of rugs.

Thinking Henman might win.

Henman never winning.

Rain. So often I’d be outside playing and it would start to rain. I’d think – oh well, I can go inside and watch Wimbledon. But then you’d go in and then hey – it’s raining at Wimbledon too…

The comedy montage at the end of the tournament. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.

Loving the spellings of all the Eastern European names.

Growing up, Wimbledon fortnight would bring a lull, a vacant disruption to our family life. I have yet to find the trick to enforce such a lull on my family. But I will give it a go. Although I don’t think I have the capacity to get as absorbed in Wimbledon that I did in the 80s. Not the same without Des. Sue does well though. Plenty of sparkle.

Today I announced that it was “My Turn” to watch TV for the next fortnight. (Only fair – I watch nothing else). This didn’t go down too badly. The children actually went and played in the garden while I watched the match between Dokic and Schiavone. The commentators were totally pro-Dokic so I was quite pleased for Schiavone who hardly got a mention – and won.

I didn’t get to watch the Murray match, but he seems to have got along OK without me. And I haven’t eaten the strawberries yet.

Plenty time.