The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

An insider's guide to the Wimbledon queue

z(Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images).
Expert
19th July, 2018
2

George Orwell once wrote in his essay ‘The English People’ that foreign observers would be struck by the English crowd’s “willingness to form queues”. Case in point: the Wimbledon queue.

Every day, without fail, thousands of bleary-eyed queuers ‘make a day’ of waiting in line to watch a spot of tennis at the most prestigious slam of them all.

That, however, is not to say that us English folk are always fond of this act.

We do not get all warm and fuzzy over queuing at the post office, waiting for a train ticket or when you’re bursting for the loo but the urinals are overflowing and there is a foul stench emanating from the sole lavatory in a shoddy toilet block.

But I digress.

As the tournament has now finished for another year, here is an insider’s guide to the ultimate queuing behemoth.

In for a very long day indeed

Having found a trusty lieutenant, an old school pal, we arrived at the queue in Wimbledon Park at approximately 7am on Tuesday of the first week, in the hope of getting onto Centre Court the day after.

Advertisement

(Warning: this is likely to get earlier and earlier as the years go by as people try to be one step ahead of the rest, annoyingly.)

While in the queue – armed with our tent, camping chairs, books, playing cards, a tennis ball and a lorry load of food – stewards told us that we needed to be in the top 500 people for the next day to get onto the main show court.

After being taken to one side, away from the Tuesday queuers who were not as hardcore as we, we formed another line, made up of Wednesday queuers.

Several hours in, someone from Made TV (no idea either) asked me if they could record my answers about my queuing experience and if I was a tennis fan. I, naturally, leapt at the opportunity and gave a… forgettable and rather kooky interview.

Six hours after receiving a ticket saying we were at around 6700th in the queue, the ticket aficionados ended an agonising wait, with their… thorough counting ways, when they confirmed we were at 420th and 421st for the next day!

[latest_videos_strip]

What followed was the tried and trusted routine of me getting sunburnt, despite trying my utmost to look like the great South African bowler, Allan Donald, by lathering myself in sun cream.

Advertisement

We soon learnt that the Wimbledon queue guide, which informed me that only two-man tents were allowed, was not enforced that strictly. A couple of the tents could fit more people inside than my shoebox room back home.

The stewards were, however, stricter on you spending 30 minutes away from your tent. Two individuals spent two hours away from their tent and on their return, they found it had been almost completely disassembled.

But such is the camaraderie among the queuers, several nearby people put the tent up again, while the stewards were not looking. We were of the Martin Luther King mindset: “Let’s build bridges, not walls.”

My favourite queue companion that I met was Alejandro from somewhere in South America (I forget where, apologies). In our long wait, I noticed that he was the only one without a tent with him.

When the stewards asked us to put up our tents, Alejandro tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Do you need a tent for this?”

“Yes, we are camping out overnight,” I replied. “I am not sure they will let you do this without one. Maybe ask a steward?”

“Ahh, okay,” he said. “I did not know I needed a tent. Now I need to find a tent. Maybe I should have been more prepared.”

Advertisement

A passing steward interjected, “Sometimes people leave their tents behind from the day before. We can check if there are any spare.”

“Okay, I will go look for one,” Alejandro said.

Five minutes later, my new pal returned with a left-over tent that was more spacious and better than the one I had bought the day before!

Alejandro joined us later that night, as many of us gathered around phones and iPads to watch England win on penalties against Colombia.

The comical part of this was that the half a dozen pockets of people who were watching the game all saw the goals go in at a slightly different time, due to delays. Picture a sort of Mexican cheering wave – this made the penalty shootout rather confusing.

At this juncture, I regret to say, the atmosphere changed the moment I got back into the tent. The figurative storm clouds began to gather and a jarring note came bounding onto the scene. I stank. I do hope my loyal camping buddy wasn’t paralysed by it, as it was quite pungent.

We awoke at just before 6am, packed up our tent by 6:30am and began moving to tennis Mecca, one step at a time.

Advertisement

The view of the court we, eventually, enjoyed

One of the many good things about this experience is that the people who camp out the day before for Centre Court are guaranteed good seats if in the top 500.

When we hit the turnstile to buy our £78 ticket – not the cheapest, I’ll admit – we were allowed to choose from two of the many seats that were left in the tier closest to the court. Almost like we had earned the respect of the organisers.

Before we were allowed into the grounds properly, we had to wait behind a row of extremely tall G4S security staff, where I believe the requirement is you have to be at least 6’4”.

At 10:30am on the dot, we formed an orderly march, which then became a Chief Wiggum hasty trot as we tried to keep up with these giants. After striding 50 yards, we stopped for a few minutes and then continued our march towards Court 3.

And then, we were off.

We enjoyed a glorious day of tennis, I posed with some VIPs in the tennising world, managed to get my Pimms, my free strawberries and cream for being an HSBC banker – maybe the only perk it has – and best of all, I saw Roger Federer live for the first time after supporting him since 2003.

Advertisement

I later learnt that I was very briefly on the BBC, when the camera zoomed in on us die-hard Federer fans, and I was in the Times newspaper too. Dreamland!

So, that is my story on the Wimbledon queue – I recommend it highly. The queue that is.

Oh, and then I did it all again, this time without the tent and with a different group of pals, the day after.

close