The most gloriously British summer party!
... and best of all? You don’t need to see a scrap of tennis to have a ball at Wimbledon
THERE is something surprisingly uplifting about being greeted by Tony Finnan, a 53-year-old grandfather, outside Southfields Tube station.
Partly because Tony, a London black-cab driver who can squat lift more than 500lb, is offering discounted taxi rides — just £2.50 instead of a hot, sticky 15-minute walk — to the All England Lawn Tennis Club on the hottest day imaginable. He is also fabulously chatty, extremely twinkly and boasts biceps the size of hams, which he flexes to impress at any opportunity.
But most people just enjoy the sheer brilliant silliness of his hair, which, for the 15th Wimbledon running, has been trimmed, buzzed and painted bright fluorescent yellow (complete with white seam) by his wife Carol so he now looks exactly like a giant human tennis ball.
There’s even a perfect black panther — the Slazenger logo — on the back, just above his vast, bull-like neck.
‘It had to be Slazenger! That’s the official Wimbledon ball!’ he says.
Tony, who lives just down the road from the Tennis Club — and is already hoarse after shouting ‘Taxi! Only two pounds fifty!’ from 5.10am — is one of the thousands, many of them enterprising locals, who form the Wimbledon community until a week on Sunday.
Most never make it past the hallowed gates of Wimbledon to watch the action on Centre Court, eat overpriced strawberries and drink Pimm’s.
Instead they spend their (very long) days offering their services to the crowds outside the grounds — selling everything from ice cold water to picnic blankets, Panama hats, designer denim jackets, umbrellas (this week doubling as parasols) and sun cream.
Children write wonky signs on bits of cardboard and sell home-made lemonade. Grannies bake scones and tea loaves. One lady on the main drag from the station is advertising sewing lessons, for goodness sake. A very pale man in a vest, called Ricky — an ice-cream man in his other life — will be here from 7am to 10.30pm, selling iced water at £1 a bottle. ‘I’d never sell warm water, ever!’ he swears.
Some rent out their gardens for parking (£50 a day) or to people running their own stalls.
OnEfamily have been paid to have their entire front garden transformed in to a Hawaiian paradise, complete with straw gazebo and fake grass, by a sunglasses manufacturer in a bid to ‘ increase brand awareness’. Many of the Wimbledonfortnight community work horrendous hours and make a huge amount of money.
Tennis-ball Tony will be here until 10pm tonight, will do 17-hour days for the rest of the tournament and couldn’t be happier about it — he earns a small fortune.
‘It’s a trade secret, but it’s absolutely worth doing. ABSOLUTELY.’ This year he’s going to pay for his son Chris’s wedding in Santorini. Although I suspect Tony might be here anyway.
‘I take a fortnight off my usual work and it’s like a holiday,’ he says. ‘It’s not as if the people are football hooligans, are they? They’re nice people. It’s a nice atmosphere.’ Because that’s the thing about Wimbledon, it is nice — and gloriously British.
Yes the Tube is overcrowded, the streets are seething and the sun is doing its best to shrivel the stunning purple, green and white hanging baskets, but somehow no one is shoving or pushing or being remotely irritable.
Even the thousands of hot, sweaty people in the vast, snaking mass who queue from 6am each day — first for a queue pass and then, again, to actually enter the grounds — are in good form, and arresting to look at in floral dresses and sunhats, teeny shorts and cropped tops, sport socks, daringly undone shirts, sandals and floppy cricket hats.
Meanwhile, the shops in the High Street have gone tennis- mad. Tennis balls and the green, white and purple tournament livery colours are in every window
Ed Savitt opened Dropshot, an independent coffee shop, just three weeks ago and is enjoying his ‘baptism of fire’. A few doors down, at DeRosier Chocolate & Coffee Shop, chocolate tennis balls and chocolate racquets are flying off the shelves.
And everywhere you look are dozens of well-heeled and unfailingly polite volunteer stewards sporting bright orange hi-viz jackets, official armbands and a splendid array of Panama hats.
There is also an army of professional stewards, which includes Maurice, 68, a retired custody officer. His fluorescent yellow suit is almost too bright to look at as he barks happily at people wandering into the traffic with their noses deep in their phones.
Recently widowed Maurice is currently in the middle of summer’s stewarding ‘season’ and loving it.
‘I’ve just done Royal Ascot — I did the parking there — 4,000 cars!’ next he’s up to Scotland for the European golf tour, followed by a trip to Everest Base Camp in October — something he’d always wanted to do — to commemorate his late wife. His fellow stewards are supporting him financially.
He’ll be on his feet for 14 hours a day and then home for a long soak in the bath and a huge glass of red wine. ‘ By the last Sunday I’ll be dead on my feet,’ he chirps happily. ‘I do it every year!’
Maurice’s spot, a few hundred feet from the Club, is in the epicentre of Joanna Doniger’s rental empire, TennisLondon.co.
uk, a sort of posh Airbnb for people or corporates who can afford £12,000 for the fortnight, want sleek modern properties and Joanna at their beck and call.
This year, the heat has bought fresh challenges, including a glass shower cubicle that exploded in the heat (‘luckily no one was in it’), and requests for air-conditioning units and top-of-the-range fans.
none of which is demanded by the thousands camping out this week. There isn’t even a shower block in the official camping field.
‘It’s fine,’ says Rita, from Melton Mowbray, who is here for the full fortnight with friends Gillian, Anne and Maggie. ‘We’ve got wet wipes and a bucket and we have a strip wash in the loos.’
This is their sixth year running and Maggie, 18 yesterday, couldn’t think of anywhere she’d prefer to spend her landmark birthday.
‘It’s such fun and everyone is kind and friendly,’ she says.
Even those who join me at the end of the queue at 12.05pm, where the temperature is 29 degrees and the wait is six hours minimum, are full of the party spirit.
no one seems to care that the chances of getting in are minimal. not even the two ladies I meet who have moved just once (yes, really) since joining the queue at 7.15 this morning.
‘Time doesn’t exist any more,’ says Chris, from nottingham. ‘But we’re having a very nice time.’
More than half the campers aren’t even bothering to queue today. They’re just enjoying the scene, reading, sunbathing, playing football, listening to music.
natalie, a 33- year- old events organiser is here for the eighth year in a row. She and her friend Lila, are stripped almost off in teeny bikinis and drinking gin and tonics garnished with strawberries.
‘Every year I want to see Andy Murray here and every year I’ve failed,’ says natalie.
NExTdoor but one, the ladies are drinking Prosecco, bought from McClusky’s, a corner shop decked out in green and purple. ‘ The nicest shop in the world!’ they trill in unison.
Eamon McClusky’s family have been running the shop for 62 years, but this promises to be their best yet. He has ordered 50 extra cases of Prosecco, gallons of Pimm’s and is overflowing with ice. He will be open from 6am to 11pm and has a ‘Wimbledon table’ selling everything from instant porridge to sunhats, sunglasses to sandwiches.
But not everyone’s in it for the money. Over the years, residents have raised tens of thousands for charity by renting out their drives, gardens and even homes.
Some rabbis running a popular food stall are raising money for a local Jewish outreach programme.
And Jack and Chloe, selling Panama hats at £15 a pop outside a vast house on the main drag, tell me the ‘very, very nice’ lady who owns the house lets them have the spot in return for a donation to Macmillan Cancer Support.
Wimbledon fortnight is about so much more than the tennis. It is a rite of passage. A wonderful two weeks where you can leave your normal life behind, work incredibly hard, laugh a lot, make a tidy nest egg — then spend the rest of the year looking forward to doing it all again next time.