"I've queued at Wimbledon 2009"; or, once a year people decide they might care about tennis after all

so last night molly and i thought it would be nice to sing by wimbledon and see if we could nab some tickets. despite the fact that the guidebook referenced people camping out all night, we were not deterred. the ticket office opened at 9 so we figured that if we arrived around then, how bad could it be, especially on a monday morning? (famous last words)

after some minor mishaps with figuring which tube line we were supposed to be on due to the train randomly deciding to go to olympia despite saying wimbledon on it, we ended up at the closest tube stop at about 9:20. we walked down the street let's go had suggested and soon spied a line meandering down the sidewalk across the road, which didn't look too bad. crossing, we inquired. "that's the non-tickets line" ah that's us. "this way, then", we were told and pointed in the direction of a field. suddenly, it was clear that the line was very very long, winding and twisting through this parking lot/meadow. a nice old man volunteer informed us that 40,000 would be let in. there were a lot of people there but not 40,000 so we kept walking. we got a "queue card" which informed us of our numbers in line. 9825 and 9826. literally. hmmm. people were sprawled all around in lines, eating, drinking, and sun-bathing (thank god it was a beautiful day). we spent some time reading funny parts of let's go aloud and trying to figure out how long we would last. half an hour later of sitting in the sun, the line 2 over from us started moving. 20 minutes later the one next to us did. at this point we had been in the sun for about an hour and thus molly and i were not too hopeful, in addition to being hot/sweaty/verging on lightheaded. molly asked a volunteer how long and she said that about 9,000 people would get in this morning, then they would reach the 40,000 cap at which point no one could get in until about 4pm. it was 10:45am. we were done. but we had queued at wimbledon if nothing else and had the strawberry-shaped stickers to prove it.

we left the queue and headed for the street. instead of going back the way we had come, though, we walked by the actual tennis club, which we were relieved to find was another half mile of the line down the road. took some pictures, then continued into wimbledon town and hopped the tube home. pit stop in the grocery store and we soon had ourselves some grilled cheeses and tomato soup with a side of strawberries (without the clotted cream) at home. tasty.

molly, queuing.