I have had a busy few weeks charging around and finally am at home, feet up and watching tennis. At the moment we have a heatwave here in the UK (it is called summer elsewhere) and the Met Office have gone into its usual panic mode, urging everyone to stay indoors, drink water, don’t sunbathe and there is a Threat to Life warning (true) and we are all DOOMED.
A sign we are in what the newspapers used to call the Silly Season and it never changes. Just to add to gaiety of the nation our prime minister, Keir Starmer has resigned, condemning us all to the utter boredom of watching MPS fight like ferrets in a sack for their position/job. It seems we are to have an unelected chancer in the shape of one Andy Burnham, a pompous full of himself useful idiot, as the PM. Big names have thrown their support behind him – no doubt they have all been promised something and the whole thing is totally dispiriting.
So I am ignoring it all. I have to else I will combust with fury at the whole revolting bunch.
So back to tennis.
I went to Queens tennis last week. My friend and I have been going for some twenty years now and during that time it has metamorphosed from an excellent tournament, one the top players wanted to play at, into a second rate, over commercialised, noisy run of the mill fixture with overpriced seats and an appallingly clunky website which forces you to buy seats so high up you could see a take off from Heathrow.
When we arrived and saw our allocated seats our hearts sank. Last year I was there on of the hottest days of the summer and being so high the heat was unrelenting and I had to leave fairly early with heat stroke. We chatted to a couple of the stewards about this, then sat down and lo and behold, ten minutes later a lovely young lady came and whispered “come with me” and took us to lower seats with a great view. These were complimentary tickets which begs the question why couldn’t I buy them when I wanted to?
I have ranted in the past about Queens and the peeps who attend. Anybody who thinks the class system does not exist anymore in the UK, though not sure many think that, should attend. Hooray Henrys and Henriettas abound all tripping about knocking back the Pimms and talking in those loud braying accents that only the British Upper Class use.
I am going to write to the LTA ( awful organisation as bad as the ECB who purport to run our cricket) about their booking facility and the fact that whole swathes of the seats were empty as all the corporate lot were in the gin tent knocking back the Pimms. It really is insupportable.
OK I am in full rant mode now I know but I have not posted one for a while so indulge me.
Drive back from London took three hours through awful traffic and temperatures up in the 90s (I still do Fahrenheit) and by the time I got home I had a splitting headache and felt nauseous and ill. Got indoors, dumped luggage etc and just went to bed. Remained there for 24 hours and then alone and palely got up and sorted things out.
So I am now indoors and as the Weather guys think that I am at risk of death by heat as I am of a certain age, I intend to draw my curtains, drink water, watch tennis, eat strawberries and make sure I survive the horrors of the heatwave. I shall not, however, be seeing what is happening in Parliament. A pox on them all.
Leave a Reply