Lunch with a Cousin & Tennis

Wednesday 30th August
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The overcast skies let loose overnight, when we wake it is to a wet and cold looking grey day, a perfect day to spend indoors. Today we have organised lunch with my cousin Janet and her husband Graham here at the hotel bistro that overlooks the beautiful parklands setting of Cannizzaro House.

We have breakfast, also served in the bistro, by the time we leave the rain is coming down fairly heavily, looking as if it is definitely settling in for the day. 

Janet and Graham arrive at the hotel around 11.30am, early so that we can chat for a while before lunch at 12.30pm. When they arrive we slip into easy conversation, although we haven’t seen them since Sandra & Dean’s wedding in Australia in 2012 it really does seem like only a few months ago. Amanda too enjoys there company and we talk on and on catching up on each other’s families latest events, our lives and shared history as the children of two very close brothers. We spent a lot of time together on holidays or on weekends as families when we were young. I was the only boy and the eldest, so it somehow fell to me to look after my little cousin Janet, while my sister Sandra and cousin Barbara, more of the same age played together. Time passes through lunch and on into the late afternoon at which time we think we should move to the bar lounge before we are handed dinner menus, the conversation continues as the sun briefly makes an appearance before going down for the night. The time slips away until the hands on the clock reach 9.00pm and our guests need to leave for their home in Fetcham about 30 minutes away. We had a great lunch and wonderful conversation that could have gone on, if only the days were longer. We say our “Til we meet agains” and retire for the night. 
Thursday 31st August
A very cool morning this morning a little bit of a shock to the system, through the window, we see sunny skies outside, inviting us to a pleasant day, I check the temperature but it’s only 8c/46f, chilly indeed.

After breakfast, we take our now usual path across Wimbledon Common, me wearing a light sweater and Amanda in her light rain jacket, we add our footsteps to the all ready well worn pathways, tracks really that criss cross this grassy space. Through the village we walk and following the signs down Church road, pass St Mary’s church on our right until we reach the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, better known as Wimbledon. We are booked for a tour of the grounds and facilities starting at 11.00am, our ticket tells us to be there thirty minutes before hand we are early and we are on time to do that. 

It still amazes me that such a famous place was so close to where I grew up and I really never went there or to my recollection even passed by. My parents were not sporty people, dad didn’t take much interest in football, tennis was I believed for the elite, neither did mum except maybe the football pools, a type of gambling where by you guessed the wins, draws and losses of the football team competition and could win substantial amounts of money if you predicted the right outcomes. More amazing is the fact that between 1955 and 1964 Australia dominated Wimbledon, winning the men’s single seven out of the ten years, with players Lou Hoad, Rod Laver, Ron Emerson, Neil Fraser and Ashley Cooper. One must believe that this somehow worked it’s way into my parents psyche and helped build a picture of Australia as a winning country and a place where a new start could be had.

My first impressions are that the old buildings look like the older part of Adelaide oval, red brick covered in deciduous ivy that is now starting to turn red and being clipped back to follow the buildings window edges. We pass through security, opening our bags to the watchful eyes of security officers, before having our tickets processed and proceeding to the tour starting point.

The tour starts on time and will last approx ninety minutes, long we thought as we join a small group and begin our tour in earnest. Our tour guide, a middle aged lady with a love of tennis begins with the outside courts describing how the courts are renovated and reseeded each year with meticulous care after the season and can take nine months to once again reach their peak, a dense lush green playing service of just 8mm high. This year over 475000 people attended the championships, a far cry from the 200 that watched the first match played in 1877. It’s not that expensive to buy a day pass during the season around 45 pounds, but you have to be quick to grab a seat from one of the only three rows of seats that line the outer courts, if you leave your seat it is forfeit. The Club currently has 18 tournament grass courts, eight American clay courts, two acrylic courts and five indoor courts. There are also 22 Aorangi Park grass courts, which serve as competitors’ practice courts before and during The Championships. 

Cranes rise high above court 2, this court is currently having a roof added to it as rain is always a feature of Wimbledon events only on a handful of occasions has it not rained during a Wimbledon tournament.

 We venture into centre court territory, behind the scenes where the media have their studios, the BBC a major sponsor is the studio we are shown. Sue Barker was presenter this year and was joined by tennis legends Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe and Billie Jean King.

All the major world broadcasters have studios here, as we pass along the corridors we notice Fox Australia. We pass outside and laid out before us is centre court, the grass looking a little worse for wear, but apparently recently reseeded. Above us the roof is open and on queue a gentle rain starts to fall, the clear blue morning sky has disappeared. 

The tour continues describing the on going plan to move Henman’s hill to accomodate the moving of another court and to create more courts. One of the amazing parts of this tennis club is that the courts are built above ground with restaurants and tunnels big enough to drive trucks through underneath in order to service the vast amount of people that visit every year. 

We visit the players facilities, where there are restaurants, even nail and hair salons everything they may need before going onto court. As long as they stay within 7 miles of the facility they are provided a free ride to and from the courts. Not only is Wimbledon the only grass tennis grand slam but it’s the only one where players have to wear all white, no colour allowed, even underwear, that might show through, or on shoes.

We may have thought the tour was going to be long but the time just whizzes by. The commentary informative and entertaining. We have some lunch at the Wingfield cafe, named after Major Walter Clopton Wingfield who was instrumental in the mid 1800’s in taking tennis outdoors and developing the game as we know it today. They can’t make coffee but desserts are unbelievable.

 We tour the museum with many interesting facts about the game, the development of racquets to me one of the most fascinating. A huge industry in itself, starting with hand made wooden laminated racquets, to steel then aluminium and now graphite, the latter mixed with other materials like tungsten and titanium.

When we emerge from the museum there is still light rain falling but the sun is warm when it peeks through. Amanda with her jacket is happy, me not so I left mine at the hotel thinking the clear blue skies would stay but this is Wimbledon. Fortunately the rain eases then stops altogether as we make our way back up Church road, through the village, stopping at a cute looking book shop, then across the common and finally back to the hotel.

We have booked dinner tonight at “Light on the Common” in the village, a casual cafe style restaurant we ate lunch at earlier in the week. The rain has stayed away but we aren’t taking any chances, with our rain jackets and a large hotel provided umbrella we make our way back across the common, about a ten minute walk to the eatery. The sky is clear above with some beautiful cloud formations across the common ahead of us that are lit by the dying light behind us, while the buildings in the village are reflecting their colours of brown brick and painted white, blue and pink in Rushmere pond, that is now mirror still. I didn’t bring my camera but the iPhone will do, I can’t miss this picture worthy of a painting.

The restaurant is quiet we are the first to arrive, our shared entree/appetiser of calamari and broccolini in a sweet chilli sauce arrives quickly, before the bread and olives we had also ordered. The squid is tender and tasty, we have grown to like the French rose’s currently hitting the wine lists, this one is no exception, crisp and delicate, light in colour with just a hint of nectar. We have to ask again for our bread, telling them to forget the olives. Just as our main course arrives so do they, obviously no communication going on back in the kitchen tonight. 

Amanda had ordered a very British dish of Cod with baby potatoes and broccolini, while I had ordered the teriyaki salmon, with haricot beans and broccolini. Both dishes are delicious. For dessert we stick with ice cream, although there were many exotics desserts on offer. 

Finally well satisfied with our days adventures, we walk back across the common in the darkness lit by the torch from my iPhone back to Cannizzaro House and our beds.