Showers suspend play

You know that summer is officially here and you’re guaranteed two weeks of rainy showers, when you turn on the TV and hear that infamous music for the start of Wimbledon. Out they roll the past tennis masters to commentate, Boris Becker out of his cupboard and John McEnroe out of his soundproof box. Yes, I AM being serious.

I just adore how British the whole tournament is, I know that’s more blazingly obvious than a Big Brother contestant appearing in a lad’s mag, but the rules and traditions are so quintessentially British.
From the determination of a Brit camping out to get on Centre Court and once there sitting under an umbrella, safe in the knowledge that ‘giving it 5 minutes’ will clear the grey skies – and that’s just our British players!

The great hope and longing that our national number one WILL make it to the final and lift the trophy this year and the sudden hilarity of a pigeon landing on court and disrupting match point – when in any other situation, walking through the city seeing one of those buggers merely gives you the desire to kick it towards the direction of the road.

The Britishness seems to rub off on the international stars too, Roger Federer in his blazer last year and this year in an even more fitting cardigan – complete with gold buttons and RG initialed crest. It’s more forced to please the masses than Madonna’s Americano-Cockney accent.
Ralph Lauren is shipped in with his preppy style to make the court staff and umpires look like 1950’s boyband dreamboats, while the public descend on the stomping ground now known as Murrayfield or Murray Mound – previously a Hill belonging to Henman and a Ridge owned by Rusedski.

We also love an underdog and once the tradition of our man or woman going out in round 2 becomes a distant memory lost in the bottom of a strawberry punnet, we adopt another less obvious hero as our own to defy the odds.

But if us Brits survived the Blitz, then what’s a little sprinkling of rain going to do to harm us during a tennis tournament? The possibility that Cliff Richard’s agent will be rubbing his hands together at the thought of one spit of rain landing on the umpire’s nose – that’s enough to shake an entire nation to its very core.