Wimbledon - an area in southwest London that is full of South Africans and home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships for over a hundred years. A group of us queued up overnight on Friday night in Wimbledon Park for tickets the following day, along with several thousand others. The idea is you rock up as early as possible to Wimbledon Park (down and across the road from the tennis stadium) on the day prior, get your queue card that has your number in the queue, pitch your tent, hang around, and at 6am the next day the queue reforms on foot and inches its way forward towards the ground. The earlier you can get there (i.e. the closer you can get to the front of the queue), the more options you have for which court you can buy tickets for (Centre Court, Court 1, or Court 2 - the rest have no reserved seating and anyone with an entry ticket can go in and find a free seat).

The British absolutely love to queue - just ask any of them and they'll tell you. They even have a big fat guide to queuing especially for this hahaha!

We got there around 5:30pm, pitched the tents, and whipped out the kids cricket set hehe (spot the beer can in place of bails).

There were a few hotties wandering around (this was not one of them).

Sunset came but the forecasted thunderstorms never did (definitely a good thing!).

At the ungodly hour of 6am we had to pack up the tents and take our places in the queue.

As it inched forward we happened to be near a bunch of portable toilets when a truck arrived to flush them out, and fuck me did it stink hahaha!

We continued to inch forward bit by bit and found out we would be able to buy tickets for Court 1 - sweet! All the big names are on Centre Court but since this is only the third round of the tournament they're all playing nobodies and so the tennis would be nothing great to watch. Instead on Court 1 we got to watch somebodies and some much better tennis!

This chick was giving out free bottles of water, and spraying people with a cooling mist of water in a can hehe. Although he wouldn't admit it, Matt loved it ;)

When we got to the airport-like security check we were told no sleeping bags were allowed through after erroneously being told otherwise by a steward earlier. Karl (light-blue shirt) cracked the shits and got a talking to by Mr Plod hahaha - brilliant!

We eventually got in just after 10am, and as Court 1 didn't kick off until 1am we headed straight to Aorangi Terrace (yup, a New Zealand Maori name in Wimbledon believe it or not), watched highlights on the big screen of the previous day's play, and knocked back a few Pimm's (very English!).

A few of the crowd on the hill got interviewed on camera, and I was willing to let them interview me but they left hehe - bummer.

Come 1pm we found our seats - right near the front behind the umpire, not bad! Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is generally considered the most prestigious. It has been held here at the All England Club since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments (the others being the Australian Open, the French Open, and the US Open), and the only one still played on grass courts. The tournament takes place over two weeks in late June and early July.

The ball boys all came out not long thereafter, and man do they take this shit seriously. Their at-attention stances and sprinting around fumbling balls everywhere had us all pretty amused.

The heavies were out as well. If Sharapova was playing I was going to run out and grab her ass and my mate was going to pay my bail hahaha! Might have been easier said than done, but regardless she was eliminated a few days ago.

Anyway, first game up (of four) was Nikolay Davydenko (looking like a convict) vs. Tomas Berdych.

Davydenko had the better ranking of the two, and in theory this game should have been a pushover for him.

Berdych had a good serve on him though, regularly firing them out at well over 200km/h!

This goober was supposed to be holding the brolly over the player for shade, but instead held it over himself hahaha! Ball boys are funny :)

The linesmen provided some entertainment as well. I don't think pop really knew what was going on...

...but Big Bertha here sure did, and she sure liked to scream those calls at the top her lungs!

They all regularly got it wrong though :) Even one of the chair umpire's calls was challenged by a player and found to be wrong - much to the delight of the crowd hehe.

Speaking of the crowd, most of them would have had sore necks by the end of the day, except for the guy asleep there.

There were a few hotties in the crowd too, and ol' Karl with his Paparazzi camera here and the mega-zoom lense had a good time scoping them out hahaha!

Despite Davydenko's ranking (and bitching to the umpire about something or other), he played like he'd been paid big to lose, which he did well at 6-2, 6-3, 6-2.

Second up was the completion of a game that had started the day before and had to be stopped at 9:30pm due to light after they'd been going for over four hours. It was between Tommy Haas and Marin Cilic (with Cilic seeded higher). We'd been watching highlights of this game on the big screen earlier - bloody good game and the sets so far were 7-5, 7-5, 1-6, 6-7, 6-6 so all tied up in the fifth.

These boys must have been sore after doing four hours just the night before!

WHACK!

It was short but it was good to watch, with Haas taking the fifth set 10-8.

After those two departed, on came a couple of chicks - sweet!

Sabine Lisicki - some unseeded 19-year-old nobody vs. Svetlana Kuznetsova who had just won the French Open weeks ago and turned 24 today apparently.

Again, this game should have been a very one-sided affair.

Be that as it may, the little 19yo was looking good, and Karl certainly thought so too, moving down to the front row to get a better shot hahaha - dirty bastard!

With us expecting that game to be a foregone conclusion we left to get some food and wander around the rest of the ground.

Wimbledon has 19 courts in total, all with nobodies playing nobodies.

After getting fairly sunburned, later in the day this shit started to roll in and the forecasted showers were looking pretty likely.

We got back to the court just in time to see the cute little 19yo thump the French Open winner in straight sets of 6-2, 7-5! Good job!

Pick the loser - man did she look dirty about it!

The last game of the day on Court 1 turned out to be the best one - Speedy Gonzalez vs. Juan Carlos Ferrero - a former world number one now contemplating retirement.

Gonzo was the more powerful of the two, smashing some incredible forehands down the line and so forth, ace after ace after ace, and winner after winner but Ferrero Rocher was the more consistent with a lot fewer unforced errors.

Speedy was a real showman as it turns out. This was him waiting for his opponent to finish pissing around after a break, and he frequently had words with the umpire for no apparent reason hehe. He also waved and posed for cameras in the crowd a couple times. Needless to say he fast become the crowd favourite, with everyone making a lot of noise for him. Good strategy.

When he lost the third set he smashed his racket hard on the floor and that was the end of that.

He had plenty more to choose from though.

Juan on the other hand was much less animated.

Big Mexican Wave around the full house!

The skies were looking more and more threatening, it was getting pretty dark, and rain did fall on and off.

The players were given the opportunity to call the game off for the night but much to the delight of us all they battled on.

After three hours of play the cool, calm, and collected Ferrero took it out with 6-4, 5-7, 4-6, 6-4, 4-6.

Gonzo took his 500 rackets (including the one he smashed up) and went home.

Everyone else piled out about this time and went home too. Pandemonium!

One of the nearest Tube stations was chaotic - good thing I has biked out there :)

According to this BBC news article a 'heatwave' is coming! I say 'heatwave' in quotes because according to that same article, the definition of a heatwave for this part of the world is temperatures in excess of 30 degrees during the day and 15 at night. Big deal. In Brisbane you'd be disappointed if the temperatures dropped below that hehe. Last time they had a heatwave here was the summer before I landed in Edinburgh, and people died! The thermometer rises above 30 and it starts killing people off hehe, dear me. Regardless I'm not complaining, except about the outlook - it's all going to crap out on Friday just in time for the weekend as is so often the bloody case!