Yes – it's a miracle. I have voluntarily spent the night in a tent. And all when my own bed was only 600 metres away…
And as a result, I now have the lowdown on 'how to camp for Wimbledon Tennis tickets'. Main learnings being:
– You have to get there VERY early these days. By about 1pm the day before if you want a chance of Centre Court tickets for the next day and by about 5/6pm if you want No.1 Court tickets. Yup, that means two days off work (for you folks who still graft properly for a living)
– They hand out the essential Queue Cards either when you first arrive or up to an hour or so later – so no, you can't nip to the loo or hunt a cup of tea till the magic card is in your sweaty mitt
– Nicky & Jules' tent is impossible to put up. Despite us and all our tenting neighbours having a go it remained stubbornly unwilling to have its poles threaded through or look remotely dome-like. Swighty's emergency repalcement tent however was up within 120 minutes, hurrah!
– You can actually escape out of the park for dinner – the 'you have to be at your tent every 45 mins' rule didn't seem to be enforced. Although we had a very lovely al fresco supper, care of Mr Chef Hawkes and Scrumpy, wrapped in our granny rugs
- You'd be a brave person however to sleep at home and leave your tent up without you – they are deliberately cagey about when the tents have to be taken down and the line of people closed up, and you need to be there for that
– There is however, time to nip back to our house, shower, change clothes, dump tent and stock picnic bag with Pimms, cold fruit, sarnies etc the next morning – MUCH nicer than a quick wash in the portaloos – although the 'every gets up at 4am thing' could have been a bit less early, urrgggh
– The next magical item – your wristband – gets handed out around 8am. Miss it, and you miss out! (Cue traumatised woman next to us who went back to the Left Luggage place to fetch her tablets as they were coming round….)
– And as you get naff all sleep, by the time you are in, have had a cuppa and some breakfast and start to think about tennis – it's time for a sneaky kip on the so-far quiet Henman Hill.
– And of course once you've then had a couple of Pimms and the sun shines – cue lots of 'I had no sleep' nodding off in your seat, jerking awake every time Sharapova grunts…
Still – a good day, top weather, great tennis as ever – and only a 15 minute stroll home back to the sofa to watch the pair of us on the TV highlights, nice!