Pick a Com­plete Stranger, Then Root Your Heart Out

Boy did we have fun at Wim­ble­don! Way more than I expected. My sin­gle expe­ri­ence with the ten­nis in the past was way back in… gosh, was it 1991? That year, there was so much rain in the first week that Mid­dle Sun­day, always play­less until then, had to be called up to acco­mo­date all the delayed matches. And since there had been no advance ticket sales, since that day had never been open for play before, the powers-that-be at Wim­ble­don decided to let the masses take con­trol. First come, first serve, in PER­SON! So John and I gath­ered up our waxed cot­ton coats, and blan­kets and what­ever else, don’t even remem­ber, and slept out on the pave­ments all night, wait­ing for dawn. As I remem­ber it, we had a great time! There are some very scary pho­tos of us to prove that sleep­ing rough is not a way to look your best the next day. But we didn’t care. We trooped in, and it was a blast. Our crowd, on Cen­tre Court that day, brought The Wave to Wim­ble­don! Until then, and since, such a breach of eti­quette and Stiff Upper Lip would never have occurred. Such fun.

It was quite a dif­fer­ent story this year. I showed up in a lit­tle black sheath dress and the beau­ti­ful Fer­rag­amo scarf John’s mom brought me from Flo­rence, and John was in white shirt and linen khakis. We headed for the Debenture’s Lounge, where cor­po­rate spon­sors and their clients can hang out, and met up with John’s work col­league Ed and his drop-dead gor­geous new wife Trupti, for lunch at win­dows over­look­ing Court 17. Lovely rose wine, lan­goustines and avo­cado with marie rose sauce, smoked salmon. Yum. Then down to Court One, where two play­ers we had never heard of were listed, just by their first ini­tials and last names. “Now how to we decide who to root for?” I asked. “Not even know­ing their first names. It’s rather ran­dom.” “Oh no,” said Trupti, “You see who has the bet­ter bum, and that’s who you go for. It’s easy.” So we decided that Ran­dom Czech Who­ever had a bet­ter bum, con­sign­ing his Ran­dom Swedish Oppo­nent to ignominy, and the match was on. Unfor­tu­nately for court man­ners, Trupti and I (and sev­eral hun­dred other peo­ple) found much more inter­est­ing things to focus on than the match, like how she and Ed met, and her Indian her­itage, and of course Avery’s win­ning the Latin cup. The ref­eree had to shush us, so we calmed down and decided really to get behind our Ran­dom Player and show our support.

When play was dull, I pelted Trupti with ques­tions about proper Eng­lish. She and Eddie speak quite the most per­fect plushy ver­sion of the lan­guage, with all the most ele­gant phrases and responses to queries. “Pre­cisely!” and “Yes, very much so indeed.” I would love noth­ing more than to have been born such an ele­gant per­son. “How bad is it these days to say ‘bloody’?” I asked. “Oh, not bad at all, it’s quite the done thing,” she assured me. “There are far worse. Things I am afraid to say I said dur­ing the Por­tu­gal match, in front of my mother! In quite a fam­ily envi­ron­ment.” Of course I can­not print them here. And then there is “chap” ver­sus “bloke,” and it seemed that “chap” was rather more for­mal, where “bloke” is chummy. I should fol­low in Avery’s foot­steps and read the won­der­ful book I gave her, “Watch­ing the Eng­lish,” which explains all the lit­tle intri­ca­cies of the class sys­tem, the way dif­fer­ent words for dif­fer­ent things are used by the var­i­ous classes. For instance, who says “lav,” who says “loo,” who says “toi­let,” who says “ladies”? We’ll have to read it to find out. Or ask Avery.

There was a rain delay con­ve­niently just at teatime, so as the ball boys ran to cover the grass with the pre­cise and per­fect rolled-up cover, we retreated into the lounge again for pep­per­mint tea, egg and cress sand­wiches, and straw­ber­ries. Just as we fin­ished eat­ing, play was back on! Perfect.

Well, as the hours and sets went by we got more and more enam­ored of our Player. Finally, frus­trated by cheer­ing on some­one about whom we knew noth­ing, we got Eddie to look him up on his Black­berry, thereby reveal­ing that his name was Radek Stepanek, and of course we knew he was Czech. By that time we could iden­tify all his tricks, his weak points, like approach­ing the net and try­ing to hit the ball back with­out let­ting it touch the ground. “No, Rad, no! You know what hap­pens when you do that!” Finally Trupti said, “I’ve got to get down there and talk to the man. He’s los­ing my loy­alty.” The match went on and on, into the fourth set, with even tie-breakers being tied. The sun sank below the top of the sta­dium, reveal­ing a per­fect sum­mer evening sky, and it even got a bit chilly. At long last the Swedish player, Bjork­man, broke our boy Radek. He was quite cute in win­ning, hug­ging him­self and danc­ing a lit­tle jig. Since then I’ve dis­cov­ered he was the old­est player in the sin­gles tour­na­ment. I think we backed the wrong dude. Although as John pointed out, I think I enjoy watch­ing the lit­tle ball boys and girls as much as the play­ers. They are so earnest! Hands behind backs, lit­tle white sneak­ers planted pre­cisely hip width apart, ball in hand shoot­ing up in the air, vir­tu­ally beg­ging the player, “Choose this one, choose this one!” Funny story: this year Ralph Lau­ren was awarded the cov­eted task of dress­ing all the ball kids and lines­peo­ple and judges. Cer­tainly they look very swank, in cream trousers, blue jack­ets piped in cream, the whole nine yards. Except that on the first day of play, 60% of the line judges needed repairs as their trouser seams burst! And there was only an hour of play. Got to get bet­ter sweat­shops, Ralph, how embarrassing.

We headed off back toward Lon­don in Eddie and Trupti’s dar­ling lit­tle black Mini con­vert­ible, or “cabri­o­let” as John insisted on show­ing off. I would dearly love to have that car. They dropped us at Vaux­hall Sta­tion and purred off. We had arranged for Avery to stay the night at Anna’s (poor Becky, although appar­ently her chil­dren get up eas­ier in the morn­ing when Avery’s there to enter­tain!), and so came home in the soft twi­light, feel­ing that we need to do things like that more often. A Day Out, as they say here in our adopted land.