8.15am: rank and file

Queuing. Apart from bad teeth and undeserved wild cards, is there anything so quintessentially British? Maybe Wimbledon – so it’s an anglophile’s delight to be sitting in field under surprisingly and mercifully clear skies being efficiently marshaled. What isn’t British is the hum of chat, especially not at this time of the morning, but mobile phone culture is, alas, pervasive.

The Wimbledon Queue is, of course, an institution, but, like much at the All-England Club in recent years, it has undergone a makeover, partly in the interests of customer service, but also in the interests of security. Queuing is now something like a rock festival without the music or a picnic without the food – you sit on damp grass amongst strangers and periodically are sold stuff you don’t want. What’s really needed right now is sunscreen, but nobody is selling that.

A steward, old boy full of bonhomie and wearing an MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) straw hat, has just berated me for working instead of escaping – he’s right. Maybe six hours to go before I'm in.

1.30pm: grounded

It’s the details that you notice – the smart white caps of the line judges, the branding that you see, but only if you’re looking, and the occasional black or brown face in a crowd as white as you'll find in London.

After an extremely efficient security check and entry to the grounds, Court Five was my destination, with a seat on the second row behind the umpire’s chair secured thirty minutes before play began. A Ladies' Singles played out in the joyless way that characterises big money sport – errors leading to flashes of anger, but no smile for a clean winner, of which there were many. There were more bad misses. Okay – the players are pros at work, however, it does seem a bit much to force the ballboys and ballgirls to stand, slab-faced like Mount Rushmore, on the biggest day of their lives.

One more detail only felt from the television, is so clear at courtside. If the game is to encourage a greater variety of play, the ball has to be faster – this ball has turned grass court tennis into hard court tennis and has largely taken the volleyed winner out of the game. New Balls Please!

4.15pm: picture perfect

One gets used to the cosmopolitan nature of London, but even for a long-time resident like me, the international flavour of the Wimbledon experience is striking. In the morning queue, conversations were struck up with Canadians and a Trinidadian; in the stand at Court Five with Australians and Argentines; and all around the grounds one hears a babel of tongues. The order of play show is names from all over the globe with the exception of Africa, the only continent in which tennis has not taken root sufficiently to produce top flight players consistently.

The All-England Club does a fine job of presenting a vision of England to match the tourist brochures – they really do sell strawberries and cream and they really do sell Pimms and lemonade. How many of the hundreds of staff are multi-lingual is open to question, but, like the players, the crowd seem comfortable communicating in English – and the English like it that way.

On court, a Men's Singles match concluded in straight sets - all power and flair from one end and desperate hanging on from the other. There was some good tennis played, but, truth be told, it wasn’t competitive enough to be good sport, but that’s to be expected on Day One of a Slam.

9.30pm: all good things...
 
Nine and a half hours after play began, the final point of the day is announced and the last of the spectators file out into the suburban streets. Play is still going on Centre Court under the uplit roof, but all around people are still busy, pulling covers over courts, attending press conferences and collecting litter. There is an almost palpable sense of a job well done - and why not?
 
The Championships are much bigger than I expected. It's easy to look at the numbers and think that the attendance is only about the same as a Premier League football match, so what's all the fuss about, but that comparison isn't valid. Unlike major sporting venues such as Wembley or Lord's, Wimbledon is dispersed - 18 courts each offering a minimum of eight hours play, spread over a decent sized chunk of ultra-expensive real estate. The spectators milling about need to eat and drink, make decisions about which courts to attend and, crucially during a day that for many will last a full 24 hours once travelling and queuing are factored in, they need space to chill, in both senses of the word. That Wimbledon delivers this brief is a minor miracle: that is delivers it in such a way that the spectator feels like the centre of attention, rather than an intruder into a private party, is more of a major miracle.
 
Having lived within a ten minute bus ride of the All-England Club while 24 editions of its Championships have taken place, I am kicking myself for waiting until the 25th edition before spending a glorious day within its grounds. Like me, millions will have been put off by stories or queuing, the price of strawberries, the security checks, the corporate boxes, the ballots for tickets, the BBC's chummily middle-class presentation, but you know what? None of that matters. The Championships, are so operatic in scale that there's room for all those things, but room for me too - and room for you. So go there!