Refried Neurons

What the fuck? It’s 4-fucking-30am and stewards are waking us up.

I mean, the promise was 6am, not 4:30. What? Why?

I know why. There are way more people than usual and all these people have to pack up and hand in their camping gear.

While waiting in the queue for the loo, one guy said he was number 6000. Assuming there are roughly two people per tent, that’s potentially 3000 tents to be packed away and dealt with.

The night wasn’t the most comfortable, but surprisingly my watch showed more than five hours of sleep. It definitely didn’t feel like it.

Pretty much around 10pm most of the crowd wrapped themselves up inside their tents or, in the case of one bloke, just a sleeping bag. He did look a bit funny because he had a dust mask and a sleep mask on, cocooned inside his red sleeping bag. Not sure if he is aware of it, but he probably found his way onto quite a few Instagram accounts, as pretty much every other person passing him was taking a selfie with him.

After a few shouts from our Italian neighbours of “shut up, cunt”, not entirely sure why the word cunt was necessary and a small intervention from a steward, the whole campsite went silent-ish.

Should have brought earplugs!

Oh, don’t we all love the snorers?

Greetings to both the Italian and the Irish – you both snore.

The issue is, I can’t exactly turn to the Italian and say, “stop snoring, cunt”, can I?

It was supposed to be quite cold during the night. It wasn’t, so for the first hour or so our tent was wide open, which made my mind go into full alert mode:

Will someone come and steal my queue card?

Obviously no one did, but my brain only finally relaxed once we zipped the door and side vents shut.

Still, I was absolutely shattered at 4:30am.

My immediate reaction was: pack up FAST. The queue for left luggage will be massive and I have absolutely no idea what happens if you get stuck there while they start selling tickets. I was not planning to find out.

We didn’t have much stuff with us, so after folding down our pop-up tent in less than a minute, to the absolute shock of all the neighbours fighting with similar tents, P went off to queue and hand in our gear.

I stayed behind mostly to help sort out everyone else’s tents.

A) They genuinely looked helpless after a while.

B) They were all already dressed up in their lovely white Wimbledon attire while I was still in my sweatpants, and there is absolutely no chance of putting down a pop-up tent without getting at least a bit dirty.

A few minutes later, all tents packed and luggage safely in storage, I figured I should visit the loos because God only knows how long we would be queuing for the actual tickets.

Don’t you love being a lady?

Yesterday and today will probably be remembered as two days of queues.

Almost like communist times in Poland: there were queues everywhere.

Queue for the loos. Queue for coffee – this one was almost as big as the toilet queue. Queue for left luggage. And, obviously, THE QUEUE.

Each queue had its own little queue committee. Or rather security blokes and stewards telling everyone where to go and what to do.

The loo queue was for ladies and blokes wanting to have a number two. Guys had urinals with basically zero queue, while women had to wait for all the boys to have their morning number two with a newspaper.

Why are there never enough toilets for women?

Guys get the same amount PLUS extra urinals, and they don’t even get periods. No need to deal with any of that stuff, hey?

What do we get?

Baby-changing stations.

And, in some places, disabled toilets so high that half of us don’t even touch the ground while sitting on them, with absolutely zero option of having a pee without touching the bloody thing and potentially catching an infection.

So yeah. The world apparently came to the conclusion that it’s perfectly OK for women to nearly pee their pants while waiting in a queue, but it is our sole responsibility to change the baby’s nappy.

Priorities. One has to have them straight.

It only took me 30 minutes to use the toilet.

Saying that, the toilet paper on the campsite was actually better quality than the one inside Wimbledon itself.

Suck it up, rich people. We got better loo roll!

And now… another queue

Next in today’s line of events was: you guessed it – another queue.

This time in pens.

A bit like cows.

I must admit, it is all incredibly organised. Everyone was split into groups of around 200 people and we spent a lovely two hours sitting there until a guy came over and rearranged all of us according to our queue cards.

At around 6:30am they started releasing us pen by pen (it really does sound like I’m talking about cows)  into the second part of the park, which I think used to be a golf course.

This is where the stewards started handing out court wristbands.

We didn’t get Centre Court. The last person to get one was number 800-and-something, so actually we weren’t that far off. Still, no chance of seeing Iga.

We got Court No. 1.

Yey!

When we finally got to buy our tickets, it seemed we had made an excellent choice of ticket booth because our lady had tickets for rows 5, 6 and 7.

Really?!

I honestly thought we would get the shittiest seats nobody else wanted, somewhere where you can see half of the court if you lean sideways and close one eye.

But no.

It seems Wimbledon actually stands up to its “do the right thing” motto and rewards effort, not just wealth.

OK, the tickets still weren’t pennies: £145 each, but for a full day at Wimbledon, they were absolutely worth it in my view.

No more queues!

At least that’s what I thought.

After purchasing our tickets, we were let into another waiting area in the park. There were more toilets, thank you very, needed that, a coffee van, a Lacoste shop so you could make yourself look properly Wimbledon, games, croissants and, if you didn’t have reserved seats…

another queue.

Thank God we ignored that one and just chilled.

One guy went all in on the Wimbledon look. After spending the entire night queuing for affordable tickets, he went into Lacoste and emerged dressed head-to-toe in white Wimbledon gear bought on the spot.

I must admit I found it quite funny. He probably spent a grand on clothes after sleeping in a field to get cheaper tickets.

Different people, different priorities.

At 10:30 they finally opened the gates and, once the first crowd cleared, we headed into Wimbledon.

And here is something I learned for next time: you don’t actually have to go straight in.

You can venture back into town and have breakfast. Or, I don’t know, go to the gym and SHOWER, because once you’re inside apparently only an emergency allows you to leave and come back.

I guess I could say I forgot my drugs?

Or not… There is a pharmacy in the Wimbledon!

I used to live nearby for a year and a half. I’d been to Wimbledon Park more than once and never once decided to come into Wimbledon even just to look around.

I didn’t do The Queue either, despite living about a 15-minute walk away. I could literally have put my tent up, sneaked back home to sleep and shower, then returned in the morning!

Oh well.

Ten years later, here I am.

Time has come.

By now I already had a proper tan. If anyone asks where I went on holiday this year?

The Queue.

Wonder if they’ll start looking for an island with that name.

And then there is Wimbledon itself

Wimbledon is actually stunning.

I was probably as interested in the venue as I was in the tennis.

I know, I know. People queue for hours to see the best of the best play tennis and here I am talking about buildings and gardens.

But I treat the whole thing as an experience, and it is a great one.

Let’s start with the architecture.

One thing I can say about it is that it is…

green.

The walls of the courts or rather arenas are lush green. The whole place is pretty much one enormous garden where someone plonked two massive stadiums and then tried to disguise them by surrounding them with even more greenery.

It is a place where I could genuinely come just for a relaxing walk or a picnic.

I finally understand why people come here just to sit on the Hill and watch tennis.

Streams, ponds, beautiful white and purple flowers everywhere. It might be the first venue I’ve been to where, despite being surrounded by masses of concrete, you somehow don’t really feel it.

And because you’re not really supposed to wander in and out, there is a huge selection of restaurants and bars and, obviously, Wimbledon strawberries and cream.

But where is the pasta with strawberries and cream?

Seriously?

This should be a thing now.

Thanks, Iga 🙂

As the game on Court No. 1 wasn’t starting until around midday, we had plenty of time to wander around, have breakfast and watch players on the smaller courts.

One thing is for sure.

There are A LOT of people there.

Even though we had Court No. 1 tickets, we missed parts of the matches to watch Iga playing on Centre Court from outside.

Also, it was too bloody hot.

I mean, if I didn’t know how much some of those players are being paid, I would almost feel sorry for them.

Actually, I did feel sorry for the smaller players, the ones who aren’t earning millions and are probably barely covering hotels and travelling around the world to compete.

It was just ridiculously hot.

We had a lovely time, but eventually left before the final match had finished and watched the rest from the comfort of our home.

We were simply too tired and too hot.

I guess five hours of sleep in a tent wasn’t quite enough after all.

Our tickets were probably resold after we left and the money went to charity, which, to be fair, is a brilliant idea.

And that is probably what stayed with me most about Wimbledon. There are so many little touches that make the whole thing feel surprisingly thoughtful.

Thoughtful enough that I actually want to do it all again next year.

Maybe this time with a few friends, so the 18-hour wait turns into something resembling a party.

And definitely with earplugs!