Saturday 28th July

Day 1 – Well we struggle this morning to drag ourselves out
of bed at 7.30 (after about 5 hours sleep!). I thought we were on holiday but
there is no lay in today. A delightful breakfast prepared by Miss O, I am
easily pleased, toast, fruit juice and tea! 
We head around the corner to the tube station and set off to Southfields
for the day (very pleased that we did not have to negotiate the stairs with
cases!). As per instructions we arrive
at Southfields in good time and we wander up towards Wimbledon. Along the way we are greeted by the many
friendly volunteers in their bright purple and orange outfits many with very
big foam hands to point us in the right direction (which was straight along one
road......). We soon arrive (after about
12 mins and its now 9.00 am) at the queue which we thought was to get around to
gate 10 to enter, and we hadn’t even reached gate one yet....... After a short time Miss O suggested that we
should see if we could wander around to gate 5 to collect our last minute ticket
purchases.... Miss O stayed in line
while Julie toddled off to claim our tickets! 
After about 45 mins Miss O’s queue began to move quite swiftly and she
quickly realised that they were letting people in at gate 1 and that she wasn’t
going to pass gate 5 – Oh No a dilemma – leave queue to find Julie or stay in
queue at front waiting for her return (no way to contact her as we could only
charge one phone last night as we only bought one charger with us....) – surely
she would not be that long..........

Meanwhile at gate 5........ Julie joined the relatively
short queue and waited patiently to collect the tickets. As is her way she chatted up some Aussie and
Brit man in the queue behind her..... 
The 2 Brits whilst out on their run had decided to collect all of their
Olympic tickets from the Wimbledon Collection office (they were not even going
to the tennis!). The 2 Aussies with
carrier bag full of Strongbow in tow had tennis tickets but were not sure which
court they were on! They mentioned they
were at Victoria Park the night before and it took about 1 hour to get a beer
and much longer to get into the venue. 
Obviously all the naff barmen were at Victoria Park as we were served
very efficiently at Hyde Park! As we
British love to queue we all waited some considerable time for the box office
to open (at 9.30). Eventually at about
9.45 and there had been no movement in smallish queue we asked lots of people
what was happening and no one had a clue. 
We were asked “what are you queuing for? – you can’t buy tickets here
today we are sold out” etc etc.... It then transpired the key to open the
shutter of the collection office had been LOST..... By this time the lady in front of us had been
rejoined by her clan which had queued at gate 10 and it transpired we had
probably pipped the other lady at the post to the centre court tickets as she
had only managed to get No 1 court! Joy
of joys at around 10.30 the key was located and found (Miss O had got bored
waiting at gate 1 so had by this time found Julie!). The joy was short lived as the processing of
the queue took nearly as long as finding the keys.... Eventually queues at
gates started getting longer so Miss O was despatched to join the queue at gate
5 in the hope that Julie would have the bloody tickets by the time she got to
the front this time!!!! With dubious
elation I, Julie was at the front of the ticket queue tennis tickets in hand as
well as the extra athletics for later in the week. She rushed to join Miss O in the queue at
around 11.30!!!!

11.50 – we’re in yippee... first stop a toilet
(!!!!!!!!!!!!) and guess what .......another queue!

We made it to our seats after a quick stop for a drink (£2.30
for bottle of pop) and hot dog (£4.50 each) and settled in to watch Tomas
Berdych against Steve someone from Belgium! 
(2 Aussies actually had seats in same row as us and now had pints of
lager in hand!). An entertaining game
and Mr Steve the Belgian underdog won! 
Next on Serena Williams – watched first set then went for a wander
around the outside courts and to sample the obligatory Wimbledon strawberries
and cream (a snip at £2.50 each). 
Returned to watch the first set of Federer and then left (through the
paddling pool of lager which the 2 Aussies had managed to throw on the floor)
to watch the Murray brothers on court 2..... 
Now very excited we can get our flags out and support Team GB to what
would surely be a win......... We
started so well racing to a 3-0 
lead....... as we all know the Brits never do things the easy way and a
rollercoaster of a match ensued. Chants
of Murray, Murray and Go team GB which
does not roll off the tongue easily echoed around the court. Eventually after some amusing comments such
as YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS to a call of a
Murray shot out and some 2hours 30 mins later we had WON no sorry wrong ending
the Murray brothers were out.................. 
Someone had neglected to tell the Austrians they were not meant to beat
the Brits at London 2012.......

We decided then to depart the stadium and head to join
another queue for the tube!!!!!!!

Hopefully our next visit on semi-final day will have a
smoother entrance. We completed the day
with an Italian meal around the corner from home and caught up with some
Olympic highlights (GB men’s gymnastics team) and lowlights (Cavendish) before
crashing looking forward to a well deserved lie in tomorrow!

To add to the woe it transpired we had managed to lose one
of our GB flags luckily we had 4 on departure as we know what we are
like!!!!!!!!!!!!!