Wimble-oguing

The Wimbledon Suite

Attend and I’ll explain to you
What wimbling is; it’s what you do
Around about this time of year –
You get yourself a case of beer,
A trailerload of popcorn and
A screen the size of Switzerland.
Through fourteen days you’ll never see
You watch commercials endlessly,
And if your wildest dreams come true
You might just spot a stroke or two.
A tennis player dressed in white,
Defeated – smiles and is polite.
Which brings me neatly to “the wimble”.
This denotes a social symbol.
It’s the gleaming tennis pro
Who looks the part from top to toe,
Whose tennis shoes are neatly tied,
Who never shows conceit or pride,
And though he may dispute a call
Will never raise his voice at all.
Will never stamp his foot and swear
That something sucks or isn’t fair,
And always will be too too well-bred
To beat officals round the head.

To fell the umpire with a blow
Would really be a beastly show.
It’s likewise not the best of sport
To chase the ball boys off the court.
You’ll find you’re on a sticky wicket –
That sort of tennis isn’t cricket.
And that is why we have the Wimble,
Who, while agile, quick and nimble,
Knows which knife and fork to use
And always minds his Ps and Qs.
“You can’t be serious!” he cries,
And to the loser hands his prize.

Although of course I could go on
Wimble-oguing through to dawn,
I find myself a set ahead
So play’s suspended – time for bed!

The Daily Ant Wimblographer

A nice skiddy one with not too much fluff (Part I)

We grew up with Wimbledon as a tradition. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t tell a well-hit, cross-court, top spin shot from a solid, backhand drive – it’s just what you did, like eating brussel sprouts at Christmas (whether you liked them or not) or fighting in the car on the way to the seaside in August. We would all park ourselves in front of the television for the BBC coverage that went on from midday sometimes to nine or ten at night, with never a commercial in sight.

“Fifteen love.”

“Why is it fifteen? Why not ten, or eleven?”

“Because it just is, Alison. Shut up and watch the game.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if that net didn’t keep getting in the way? And who are they calling ‘love’?”

“Ssh! You’ll put him off.”

“He won!”

“He’s only won the first set, Beth.”

“What’s a set?”

“Go and put the kettle on and take the phone off the hook while you’re there.”

We loved the commentary.

“And McEnroe blasts the ball across the court, ripping it across the body of the onrushing Borg.” “The last nail is always the hardest to drive into the lid of the coffin.” “Well he might be neat and elegant but he’s a little scrapper as well.” “He’s a terrier on the court.” (Causing us to burst out laughing and bark at each other.) “He’s dicing with death there.” “The bullets fly.” “He needs a little more ammunition.” “The poor ball boy saw his life flash before his eyes.” “The court is slippery underfoot.” “They’re hitting some real peaches from the ground today.” (No wonder it’s slippery underfoot!) “Well it’s her racket, she’s allowed to use every bit of it.” “Sticky enough.” “Novak threw everything at him.” “A dead duck.” “Beautifully killed!” “He’s kept his head and hasn’t let his chin drop at losing the set.” “They like a nice skiddy one with not too much fluff.” “They can sometimes spill over and press the self-destruct button.”

“Alison go and make some sandwiches.”

“What do you want in them? Dead duck?”

Somehow though, we did learn the game and the scoring. We even had our favourite players, and I find it all fascinating though I do feel for the court (and the groundstaff) with all those players digging deep and planting their feet. Can’t be good for the grass. And then there’s the poor ball. Players – we’re told – don’t just hit the ball. They attack it, pulverize it, rip it, smash it, jump on it and even cook it. Is it any wonder they look tired at the end of the match? Actually cookery crops up fairly often in the commentary, for as well as cooking the ball, they sometimes undercook it. And nibble at it. (Probably to see if it’s cooked yet.) And then we have “crisp and crunchy volleys”, “chips and dips – he’s going to give us a bit of salsa maybe in the quarter-finals” and “well I used the word ‘succulence’ early on in this match.”

All very inspiring to anyone who loves words. Or food.

A pre-tiebreaker tennis poem

“There’s a wind over Wimbledon, heading due south
And a variable bounce on the ball
There’s an early return from the favourite to win
As he struggles with 13 games all.”

A nice skiddy one with not too much fluff (Part II)

Somehow I can’t get out of that Wimbledon habit, and around this time of year I start getting in training for the big event. That doesn’t mean running around the block or hitting tennis balls against the wall of my house, or anyone else’s house, or over the fence into the neighbour’s yard – or through their living room window. It actually means adjusting my now-western-Canadian body clock to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon, London SW19 time zone. Every day I get up earlier and earlier until by the last Monday in June I’m wide awake at 4.30 a.m. and comfortably planted in front of the television with strawberries and cream, coffee, toast, telephone and everything else necessary to sustain life as I know it.

Determined that being exiled in a foreign land isn’t going to stop me watching Wimbledon, I seek it out wherever I go. I remember having to go to a conference in Munich right in the middle of Wimbledon season, and watching it in German in my hotel room. It was intriguing. Especially the commercial breaks when Boris Becker would appear and enthusiastically tell us how his tremendous prowess in tennis was entirely due to a diet of Nutella. At least that’s what I thought he was saying but admittedly it was about twenty years at that point since I’d had to make myself understood in German. (We won’t count “I have a reservation for the room with the biggest TV screen you’ve got.”) The tennis just wasn’t the same though, without Des Lynam and Dan Maskell commentating, and all the players seemed to be hitting the balls far too fast. Then I realised that the speeds were being displayed in kilometers per hour. Oh I see! So Boris Becker wasn’t really hitting the ball at 200 mph due to his diet of Nutella!

Now once again I am exiled in a foreign land, and each year I try in vain to find a way of watching Wimbledon commercial free. And each year, as a background to that racquet sport that will keep getting in the way, more world records for spoken words per square inch are broken by commentators. Buried here in the bombardment of yesterday’s match summaries, tweets, who’s played what major this year, who beat whom last year, who they’re married to and how much money they make, we try and find the game we know must be on the screen somewhere between the scores, the statistics on aces, drop shots, lobs, smashes and slices, the upcoming TV schedules and the news updates.

Well there’s always wimbledon.com. What about them? I go to my computer and find an interview with an Olympic athlete. An interviewer accosting players and firing tennis-related quiz questions at them to a background of a drum machine. The weather forecast. A presentation of behind the scenes at Wimbledon. An aerial photo of the Wimbledon grounds with a soundtrack of tennis balls being hit.

Giving up on online tennis, I return to the TV, where the presenters are talking about tennis.

All in all, it’s still a yearly ritual. Only instead of a tennis-watching ritual, it’s a tennis-finding ritual.

And so I prepare. I cut up the strawberries, I whip the cream, I whip the cats out of the recliner, dust the big screen and find the remote control. I get up in the middle of the night, sit in front of the television and gaze at it in anticipation. But there’s something wrong! The reception is very poor. I don’t seem to be getting a picture at all. What on earth can be the matter? Oh yes, I forgot. TV service. I cancelled that in 2007.