The Very First People

A day of delights, a day for keeps. Friday, and a concocted tale of fatigue and vague illness to deflect the attentions of the school, and—above all, following a late school concert the evening before, which included an epileptic episode in the audience that meant evacuating the hall and as a result Dex wasn’t in his bed before 10.30—with sufficient plausible deniability to run the gamut of nosey neighbours, truant officers and interested parties all the way from E8 to SW19.

We had been offered tickets through the club ballot but crucially they were a pair for court no. 1 when, on men’s semis day, centre court’s the only place to be. There was a slim chance of getting on, a chance marginally fortified by the residual cuteness of my freshly twelve-year-old in tow.

If I had put down a barrel of whisky on the day of his birth, I’d be drinking it now, amber as his hair. As it was I had to make do with a frothy latte from the little Starbucks at Southfields which, as the girl in security uniform at the gate who searched my bag pointed out, smelt ‘sooo good’. It was good, too, and I drained it on the way to court 12 where, according to my sources (the massive hoarding by the front gate with the Order of Play written on it), we would see Oliver Golding, the British junior in his semi-finals against an Australian boy. The match would start at 12 and would be followed, my sources assured me, by a match with Laura Robson playing in her junior semis. No. 1 court would host various ladies doubles and mixed doubles matches later, but for now I was happy to use the tickets as a glorified ground pass for which it wasn’t necessary to queue from four in the morning.

And with a little time on our hands, we were able to get onto no. 12 in time to be the Very First People. Being a VFP has many advantages. Essentially it means you make a social connection with the staff at whatever event it is at a point where they are not in work mode yet and when whatever vestige of respect for humanity they have managed to carry over from the previous day’s work has not yet been pummelled out of them by the overwhelming hoards of needy clients. You ask their names, and tell them yours, and offer to get them tea. And lend them your paper, and then they lend you their seat cushion. And then it’s all ‘well I’m not supposed to do this’ and ‘we don’t normally do that’ and before you know it you’re practically running the show. This is quite good at airports, medium-sized music venues and in the general retail experience. But you have to be the Very First. The Just Second or Random Third positions are nowhere. In our case, having photographed members of the ground staff as they read their Harry Potters and munched their Mars bars, and swapped cameras, and checked the state of the sky and chatted about home schooling, we were all together in a complicit little clan. Frank, the heavily tattooed London Fire Service man, let Dex out through the wheelchair access gate to use the loo and, when Dex reappeared with an outsize tennis ball for collecting autographs, let him back the same way.

Oliver lost, and Laura lost, and we went to no. 1 and found our seats.  I bought some fish & chips and some fizzy drinks and we watched some mixed doubles which is a bit like singles but with far too many people on court and lots of high fives. So we joined the hoards on Henman Hill for the inevitability of Andy Murray also losing to Nadal, and bumped into Pat Cash who scribbled on Dex’s ball. My sources had told me of a late afternoon treat. Guy Forget and Peter Fleming were playing Henri Leconte and Mansour Bahrami which I knew Dex had to see. This was proper tennis from proper legends. Men from another era. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Henri, ever since I saw him serve, vault the net, return, and get back again in time to play the next shot, a feat so useless and spectacular it only exists in the realm of entertainment. Obviously it therefore has no place on a tennis court and to a wide-eyed twelve-year-old this kind of subterfuge is dangerous stuff.

By the time we arrived, back at court no. 12, to see these old-timers crank it out once more for the cameras, the place was packed. Not a seat in the house, and we were floundering on the steps at the back of the stand, me lifting Dex up to see the grass. Until, that is, Frank spotted us, and immediately motioned for us to come down to the front. Standing room only, and by virtue of having been Very First People earlier in the day, we were lounging in the capacious bosom of the press seats as the players walked out. Bahrami served with six balls in his hand, and caught a lob in his pocket. Leconte tickled the umpire’s microphone, and stole the ball boy’s hat, and complained like McEnroe and everybody laughed. Even Fleming and Forget, who must have played these geezers a zillion times and have presumably seen every gag there is. But for us greenhorns it was all fresh, clever and hilarious. And of course from our front row seats Dex managed to pretty much fill his ball with autographs.