England

London was at the fore-front of the industrial revolution. By the late 19th century, the city had grown tremendously as people moved from the country-side and agriculture to the city and the factories. The city was bursting at the seams, and thus a lot of money and energy was poured into building the infrastructure of London, much of it still in use today.

Of course, 100 year old and older infrastructure does mean that there is a lot of maintenance that needs to occur. I wander around the city, I often see streets closed to traffic, with signs indicating work with the quaint name of “Replacing London’s Victorian Water Mains.” Despite the rather prosaic sounding name, it is a multi-million pound undertaking to update the infrastructure of London’s water system into this century.

I am reminded of this infrastructure work further today as I try and reach my destination. For anyone who rides the London train and underground system, weekend closures is probably something of a swear word, an indication that travel will be a pain. Much of the underground and rail network dates back a to late 1800s and early 1900s, including this platform at Baker Street, part of the world’s first underground train line dating back to 1863.

Of course, not all the work is due to being really old, as this weekend includes closures on the Jubilee line from Green Park to Stratford (opened in 1999) and the Docklands Light Rail (opened in 1987).

Also closed this weekend, though, was the Victoria line, dating back to 1968. Unfortunately, it was to a station on the Victoria line that I wanted to go. Instead, I needed to transfer at Baker Street to the circle line, riding it around to Victoria station, where I transferred to a Southern Line train service to Battersea Park Station. If there is one thing you learn quickly here in London, it’s to use all forms of transport available - Underground, Overground, Buses, Riverboat, and National Rail - anything that’ll take your Oyster Card.

From Battersea Park Station, it was just a quick walk to my final destination, Battersea Power Station.

Opened in 1939 by the London Power Company, the station was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, an industrial designer who was also responsible for the red telephone box so associated with London. The plant, a coal fired plant that provided electricity to London, was expanded in 1955 to it’s present form with four stacks in an imposing red brick building.

By 1983 both of the two generators were shut down, and the station fell into disrepair.

For those outside London, the station will probably best be known for appearing on the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals, with a large pink pig floating above it.

Though tethered to the station, the large floating pig broke loose and rose up into the sky. Unfortunately for travellers into London that day, Battersea is below the flight path into Heathrow Airport, and so a large number of flights were delayed and cancelled while the pig floated above London, finally landing somewhere in Kent.

The pig has become something of a symbol for the power plant itself, and had been used in the campaign to notify the public of the free tours and consultations for future development going on this month.

The power plant is quite imposing, a tall, thick red-brick structure with it’s massive stacks. It has, however, been unused for a quarter of a century, so it has fallen into disrepair, the site covered with fallen brick and rusting metal.

Currently, development plans have been drawn up to reclaim the site and turn it into a residential, shopping and business area. The plans are quite elaborate and grand, including a massive clear chimney that will vent hot air and bring in cool air into the “ecodome,” as a heating and cool measure. The glass chimney will tower above the four white stacks of the old Battersea Power Station.

The plans are not without their critics, though, and they aren’t the first plans to redevelop the site. The next two years will be taken up with approvals. Beyond that, plans to extend the Northern tube line to the site to be completed by 2015, and the rest of the buildings on the site completed in a phased development after that.

Still many years before the white stacks with be dwarfed by the glass eco-tower. Lots of time for them to tower over the south Thames.

A friend of mine recently wrote me and said that some of my blog entries lately had been "kind of down." I hadn't really thought they had, other than the one about crying watching Wilson the volleyball, but then I took a gander back at them and realized that it is possible to take away a certain negativity in them.

I sat at a bar last weekend contemplating this fact as I was having a pint. The bar was called The Crown, and is just down the street from my flat. It's in a beautiful and imposing Victorian building that now also holds a hotel.

Now, I was there for about one and a half hours, sitting at the bar and drinking two pints. The place was pretty busy. On a Saturday night the "it" crowd in Cricklewood seems to make their way down to The Crown to party. Despite there being a bar full of people, in that time, other than the bartender asking if I wanted a refill on my pint, no one talked to me.

Yet, when I walked out of the pub (finishing the last of my 2nd pint on the patio out front under a cloudy but warm night sky), I thought to myself, "what a good night."

What stuck with me wasn't the fact that I was alone in a big city with no one to talk to on a Friday night, even though I was surrounded by people. What stuck with me was two things:

Firstly, I was awed by what an amazing place, architecturally, The Crown is. It's got an amazing two floor bar area, and the bar I was sitting at (one of, I think, 6 bars on site) rose up two floors and was backed by amazing, huge mirrors.

The second thought, though, was how cool it will be once I've settled in and made some friends to have neat places like The Crown to come out to on Saturday nights. Not specifically The Crown, because I don't plan on living way out in the North-west sticks of Brent much longer, but places like it, preferably closer to The City.

As I thought it over, I realized that my optimism is one of the most important things that I have here. Bad things happen, as bad things are apt to do. In fact, the bad things will at times outnumber the good things, especially in these early days of trying to build a life here.

I truly believe though, that things will get better. There isn't a question in my mind that I will be successful here. That makes the tough stuff bareable. I also find that the tough stuff tends to waste away to the dark corners of my memory never to be recalled again, whereas the cool stuff - running down the escalators and feelings like I was flying, finding Roman ruins in the middle of a the business district of London, sitting in the yard of St. Paul's cathedral having lunch, even the fact that a computer crash meant free bus and tube rides things morning, those things stick in my mind, easy to recall and make me happy.

It's all about looking at my half-empty pint glass and knowing that not only is it not half-empty but really half-full, that the future holds the undeniable fact that the glass will be full again.

When we last saw me, I was wandering a field in south-east England. A few hours later, after taking a circular route that saw me walking through more fields, a small forest and getting cut up by even more thistles and thorns, I wound up back at the train station as clouds started to roll in. The train arrived just in time. After 15 minutes later the rain started to come down.

Riding back, my plan had been to take the train to Blackfriars Station and then the tube home, but looking at my train schedule a name popped out at me and I decided to take a detour. Elephant and Castle.

The name Elephant and Castle was familiar to me, as it is the name of a chain of British pubs in North America with locations in Toronto, the rest of Canada and the US.

It wasn’t until I arrived recently in London and looked closely at my tube map that I realized that the name Elephant and Castle wasn’t just two randomly squeezed together words (as pub names often are), but the name of an area in London. It’s the name of a tube station as well as a national rail station. The road between two round-abouts in the area is called Elephant and Castle, as is the shopping centre adjacent to road. In fact, the whole area has started to take on the name Elephant and Castle, replacing the previous name Newington in even official documents, like this website outlining a regeneration project in the area.

I pulled out my tube mapped and confirmed that I could still get home without issue, taking the Bakerloo line, which has its terminus at Elephant and Castle up to Baker station and then transferring to the Jubilee line.

The rain was really coming down when the train pulled into the station, but luckily the covered platforms let right down in to the Elephant and Castle shopping mall. I puttered around the mall for a few minutes, waiting for the rain to let up. The mall, I later find out, was voted the ugliest building in all of London by Time Out readers in 2005.

Soon it was a mere drizzle outside, so I left the confines of the indoor mall and stepped outside and into a very lively multicultural market place. There were tons of stalls crammed into the small space of the moat that surrounds the mall.

Heading up from the moat I come across a pub called the Charlie Chaplin. A sign outside provides a brief explanation of why the pub is named after the famous comedic actor. He was born in the area and lived there until moving to the USA to become a famous movie star.

The rain starts falling again, so I decide to grab a pint at Charlie Chaplin and wait for the rain to stop. The bartender serves me my pint, and I pop the question.

“Why is this area called the Elephant and Castle?”

She cocks her head to the side and slightly shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’ve lived here all my life, and I have no idea,” she admits, before turning to face a man down the end of the bar. “Hey Robbie, why is this place called Elephant and Castle?”

Robbie laughs. “Nobody really knows. There’s lots of rumours, but no one knows the truth. It’s been lost to the mists of time.”

I plop some coins in the juke box and after selecting my songs, spend time doodling in my notepad, drawing an elephant and a castle, very poorly. The elephant comes out looking like a dog with a long nose, and the castle is just a box with some teeth at the top. I have to colour in the elephant with a red pen so it stands out from the castle wall, giving it a faintly pinkish tint.

“Hmmm, I guess that makes sense. Pink elephants. I can’t imagine there being any other kind in London.”

The rain clears up and I move on. Under a subway tunnel and across the street I find a pub called the “Elephant and Castle.” Surely they’ll know the truth.

A sign out front says that the pub sits on the site of a theatre dating back to the 1600s. I walk in and find a modern looking restaurant, complete with a Thai menu. I take a seat at the bar, not at all the cosy, old English pub I was expecting, but clean and the staff seemed friendly, so I popped the question again.

“Why is this area called the Elephant and Castle?”

Another bartender with no answers to offer, as she admits she doesn’t know. Luckily, she also has a regular she can turn to. “Tom, why is this area called the Elephant and Castle?”

Unlike Robbie in the Charlie Chaplin, Tom has a definitive answer. “Prince Louis. He brought the elephant here from France. Kept it in the palace grounds, thus you had an Elephant in a Castle.”

Seems a sensible answer, so I jotted it down in my book and closed the case. At least until I got back to my apartment and could do some research on the internet.

Despite Tom’s definitiveness with an answer, it appears that in fact Robbie had it right. No one quite knows why the area is called Elephant and Castle. There are lots of theories, most of which are examined in this thread from a local London internet group.

There are a few popular theories:

• The area is named after a pub called the Elephant and Castle. The pub was converted from a blacksmiths in 1790. The blacksmith was affiliated with the Culter’s Company, a maker of swords, knives and other cutlery, who often used ivory in their handles. Their crest has three elephants on it, including one with a howdah on the back, which is a seat used by hunters when riding an elephant. The howdah is shaped like a castle.

• The name is a bastardization of the words Infanta de Castile, and references a Spanish queen or princess who visited the area. Most often Queen Eleanor of Castile who was the wife of King Edward the first is the one mentioned in this story, though other names can be found. An infanta was the eldest daughter of a king, something that Eleanor was not. Variations on this theme have Infanta meaning young, as the princess in the story was only a teenage when she was married.

• The name is a reference to the King's menagerie (zoo) located at the Tower of London, thus you have Elephants in castles. A variation on this theme was the theory that Tom from the Elephant and Castle pub was espousing with his Prince Louis and his elephant.
  

What is right we will probably never know, so the case will remain open but cold, I guess. Much like the beer at the Elephant and Castle pub in Elephant and Castle, South London, England.

Part I: Lullingstone: A Comedy of Errors (Some of Them Mine... Okay, Most of Them Mine)

I had planned to write a blog today about ruins. Roman ruins, to be exact. I had stumbled across some in central London a few weeks ago, and after some research found out about a rather well preserved Roman villa just 45 minutes by train to the South-east of London. For reasons I can't quite explain, the concept of the Roman ruins fascinated me. I was going to chalk it up to them being so old, but then Stonehenge is older and I didn't find it that interesting. I wasn't sure what it was the grabbed my attention about Roman ruins, but either way I decided I was going to see them and write about them here. I had pictures of Roman sights in London (the wall, the Temple of Mithras), had done some research into the period of Roman control of the Britain and was ready to put together an entry jam packed with interesting pictures and descriptions of the villa placed within the context of historical fact.

This blog entry, however, is not about Roman ruins. This blog entry is about things going wrong.

The day started off okay. It was supposed to rain (which would have been fine because the villa is covered) but turned out to be sunny instead. I was starting to think that perhaps I am the reincarnation of Ra, the sun god. How else could I explain the fact that I had been in London for one month and only seen a day of rain. I got dressed, brought along an umbrella and rain coat just in case and headed down to Victoria station.

Trains to Eynsford, where the Lullingstone Roman Villa is located run from both Blackfriars station and Victoria station. The train from Blackfriars is direct, but the train from Victoria is quicker, even though it requires a change, so I decided to go with Victoria station. That's when the trouble began.

I had a piece of paper on which I had copied down the name of the town I was going to, "ENYSFORD." I went to the automated ticket machine, and there was no Enysford as a destination. I went and looked at the route map and it didn't list an Enysford station either. I contemplated getting into the line up for tickets which was very long and very slow.

I was very confused. Had the website lied to me last night? Did trains not leave from here for Enysford? Finally I found a different route map that showed a more central view of London and the surrounding area. Apparently the route map I had been looking at only showed major stations. I found the place I was going on the very edge of that map.

Did you catch it, what I had done? Look back three paragraphs, where I said, "Trains to Eynsford, where the Lullingstone Roman Villa..." and compare that with the station I was looking for in the preceding two paragraphs, "Enysford." Apparently I had suffered a temporary case of dyslexia when coping down the name.

"Well, no harm, just a few minutes wasted," I said as I purchased my ticket and grabbed a timetable so I would know when trains were returning to London. I thought it would be the last gaff of the day, but it was only the first.

Next up, figuring out where to go. Ticket in hand, I stood staring up at the board. Eynsford wasn't listed anywhere on the board. I went back to look at the route map, trying to figure out what the terminal destination would be, but it was hard to do as the lines criss-cross each other all across the map. I wandered around aimlessly for another 10 minutes, staring up at the board listing departures, feeling like a complete moron.

"Damn man, you can't even figure out how to take a train?" I scolded myself. Finally I clued in. All the trains listed on the board were departures on Southern railways. I looked at my timetable. South-Eastern Rail.

Sighing, I headed to another part of the station that listed South-Eastern departures on the board.

"Ah well, another little gaff, but all's good now," I said to myself, as I boarded my train for the uneventful ride to Swanley, where I switched for a train to Eynsford. It was a nice ride through some pretty English countryside scenery. Just after passing over this viaduct bridge (dating back to 1862)...

...the train pulled into Eynsford station.

Next up, a short stroll to the Roman Villa. I had checked out the location of both the train station and the villa using Google maps last night, and I knew that you left the train station, when down Station Road to the main road, turned left and then a little ways along there was a footpath on the right side. No worries, no problems.

The station had a map of the local area, so I thought I would confirm my directions. I looked at the map, got completely confused by what I saw, and determined that I should turn right instead of left at the end of Station road. My confusion was further enhanced by the sign at the end of station road saying that the villa was to the right. So I turned right, which was wrong.

I knew it was wrong almost immediately as there were way too many houses along the side of the road and the villa was out alone in the country, but kept going anyway. Soon I found myself in central Eynsford. It was very picturesque, but I had come to see a Roman villa, not a picturesque country village. I took some snaps anyway.

I consulted a map I found nearby of footpaths in the area. "Aha, I may have taken a wrong turn, but all is not lost. If I follow this road I'll hit the Roman villa in no time," I said. So, of course, I didn't follow the road.

Actually, I followed the road for about 200 metres. Then there was a footpath off to the right. "Well, it looks like it vaguely follows the same path as the road, and is probably more scenic," I thought. So I took the footpath.

It was very scenic. First I walked through these red flowers.

It made me sleepy, so I lay down. When I woke back up, my companions the scarecrow, lion, tin-man and that little girl from Kansas were gone, but no worries, they were headed somewhere different anyway.

I carried on over a pedestrian crossing on the rail tracks, which amazed me. Trains are electric here, and get their power from a third-rail on the ground. The third rail is discontinued at the footpath crossing, but two a few feet on either side is a high voltage electric rail. I can't even imagine this in North America. Somebody would wander over to their right, get electrocuted and sue the pants off the rail company. Europe is a different animal than North America, with their off piste skiing and high voltage footpaths.

At this point I noticed that the path had diverged quite dramatically from the road. If the road was heading east, I was heading north-east. I considered my options - onwards and hope to find a path back down to the road, or turn around and backtrack. The sensible thing would have been to backtrack, but I carried on. I walked for another 20 minutes, by which time I was sure that not only was I far from the road, but I would have passed the Roman Villa. Finally I found a path heading towards the road, so I took it.

The path was very overgrown and closed in around me. Leaves and branches brushed against my arms as I walked, which wouldn't have been a problem if it wasn't for the fact that some of the plants had thorns. A thorn managed to dig it's way into my left hand, stinging ferociously and causing a pool of blood to cover the top of my hand.

I finally emerged on the road. I was sure that the Roman Villa was to my left, so I went right. I went right with reason, though, as there was a sign that said that the Lullingstone Castle was to my right. I figured I would go and see the Lullingstone Castle, and then double back to the ruin.

I wandered down the road, a nice, winding country road with little traffic and scenic farms and fields off to either side. Perfect for a walk, and these two gentlemen would agree.

Now, as I hadn't planned on seeing the Lullingstone Castle, I hadn't done much research on it other than to know that it existed. I had browsed the website and knew the basics. Lullingstone Castle is a family estate built in 1497. Its present owner is Tom Hart Dyke, who is a plant hunter. He was once taken hostage by FARC guerillas while searching for rare orchids in the Darrien Gap between Panama and Columbia. While as the FARC's prisoner, he decided that if he got home he was going to plant a "World Garden," that would "contain plants from around the globe planted in their respective continents of origin." And so he did, and he opens the estate and garden up to visitors.

Only, he doesn't open it up every day. That was the part that I failed to notice when I had browsed the website. The site isn't open to visitors during the week, only on weekends. So the best I could do was take a few photos of the gate and turn around and head back towards the Villa.

I had fumbled getting my train ticket. I had turned the wrong direction. I had taken a footpath to nowhere. I had gotten lost. I had seen a castle that wasn't open to the public.

All that didn't matter, though, because I had only come to see one thing. I turned a corner and saw the large aluminium building which covers the ruins of the villa to protect them from the elements. I developed a spring in my step as I approached the front door. I turned the corner and saw perimeter fencing blocking the entrance.

"What the heck?" I said, walking closer. Workmen walked in and out of the building, covered with dust and dirt. A large sign was posted on one of the fence panels.

Closed, until mid-summer 2008, whenever that is. All that trouble, all the things that had gone wrong, they all caught up with me. My day turned dark.

"Damnit," I said to no-one, though a few of the workers turned and looked at me, "you think that's the kind of thing that English Heritage would have mentioned on their website." The workers shrugged and walked away, exuding an air of indifference.

I was left to stew in my own juices.

Part II: Green Fields: A Fresh Start (To More Than Just the Day)

I walked back dejectedly to Eynsford, where I took the advice of the closed sign and saw Eynsford Castle. Unlike Lullingstone Castle or Lullingstone Roman Villa, it was open and free. Also unlike Lullingstone Castle, this castle is a ruin. It dates back to around 1100 and was used by the Normans until it was abandoned in 14th century. It saw some use later as a stables (which included knocking some holes in the walls to bring hay in and out), but now the horses have moved out and it's a dedicate tourist site.

At the time I figured this was going to be my only adventure of the day, so I put on a brave face and took this shot, with me trying to look like a majestic explorer.

Inside though, I was pretty bummed. Eynsford is not a big place, and so other than the 3 attractions I had come and seen, there is little else for a tourist to do. I went across the street from the castle to the Five Bells pub and had some lunch, contemplating what to do next.

I perused my train timetable. Trains back to London left every 30 minutes at 17 and 47 past the hour. I could be back in London by 3 o'clock.

I couldn't let myself do that, though. I gave myself a pep talk.

"No, come on, Wesson. Don't let this day defeat you. If nothing else, you've come all the way out to the country side. Why not take a look around. Surely there must be something worth seeing."

So I headed out, off the main road, up past a park and into a large field. Here in England there are public footpaths that criss-cross the country, many of them cutting right through private land. This was one of those paths, cutting through a field of green wheat off into the distance.

It immediately reminded me of the movie trailer for Toys, the 1992 comedy staring Robin Williams, where he walks through a field of green grass, just like this one.

I didn't know where the path led, and debated turning around and heading back to the train station instead of taking a path that might get me lost in the middle of the English countryside, but I carried on. I reasoned that going home would be tantamount to admitting defeat, and I already spent one day last week sitting at home looking up sad clips from films on YouTube and crying. I wasn't going to let that happen again.

So I followed the path.

I walked through the field, letting my hands brush the wheat. It reminded me of another movie. This time Gladiator, which uses the image of walking through grass to symbolize Gladiator moving into the afterlife. I laughed. "I don't want to go into the after life today," I said.

At the top of the hill the path cut through a stand of trees and into another farmer's field. There the path rose a bit more before cresting a hill and providing an amazing view of rolling hills of green off into the distance.

"Green fields," I said to myself.

A memory was triggered at that moment. The term greenfield is used in IT to signify a project that is going to be built from scratch. It signifies that you have a blank sheet of paper with which to start, and you can design the project anyway that makes sense. You don't have to worry about any old bits of technology, wonky bits of old code, out of date software modules or licensing agreements shackling you to a specific solution. You can do anything. It's a fresh start.

"Yeah, that's what this is. It's a fresh start. Forget about earlier. We start right here, right now," I said, and started to laugh.

When I said that it was a fresh start, I had consciously only been thinking about that day, about putting the mess up at the train station, the wrong turns and closed villa behind me. But then I realized that I wasn't just talking about that day. I was talking about everything.

I worked on one massive greenfield project once, building a call centre with 300 agents from nothing. We started with 3 floors of an empty building, nothing but concrete floors and elevator shafts, and built it into a show piece of technology and people. It was one of the toughest things I have done. We were installing servers on one side of the floor while workmen were putting up walls on the other side. I spent a lot of late nights and 16 hour days dealing with schedule delays, software installations going wrong, power outages, failed integration tests and a million other problems. In the end, though, it was an amazing feeling to see it finished. I took a lot of pride in the work I did there, that I was part of the team that built that place up from the greenfield of those concrete floors.

It hit me in that field that was what I was doing here in London. A fresh start on my life. It was greenfield. I came over to the UK with two bags of clothes and an Apple MacBook, and that was it. Everything else was left behind. I have a blank sheet of paper to design my life on.

I don't know how long it will take, maybe months, maybe half a year, maybe years, but at some point I will "settle" in here, and I can take pride in the fact I did it all from scratch.

More importantly though, I now had an image. An image I can use to pick me up in the interim when things were going wrong. All the days that want to bring me down, the tortuously slow interview processes, the confusing adminstrivia of trying to get bank accounts, health coverage and taxes set up, getting lost on the streets of the city I am supposedly a resident of. For all the times when I want to go home and watch Wilson float away on the sea and cry, instead I can now think of green fields, and remind myself that it may be slow and hard and painful at times, but that I am building something from a blank sheet of paper here and eventually my new life will get built up into something special.

From nothing more than a greenfield.

It has been more than 2 months now since I last worked, and as such haven't had any reason to set an alarm to wake up. You get used to it, the sleeping until you feel like getting up. That's not to say that I am sleeping in until noon, at least not any more. I am usually up and about by eight or eight-thirty in the morning, so I am not a complete, lazy slug. I'm just not used to having to get up because an mechanical buzz tells me to, and so it was shocking to hear the alarm go off at six o'clock in the morning yesterday.

Hanging my feet over the side of my bed, I rubbed my eyes and wondered if it was worth it. "I could just go back to bed," I think. No, I decided, this event only happens once a year and when it rolls around next year I'll probably be too busy working to get a chance to go. So I stood up and headed to the shower to get ready for a day at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club to watch "The Championships, Wimbledon" known for those outside of London simply as Wimbledon.

Wimbledon is one of four major Tennis grand slam events and is the only one played on grass. Wimbledon is also the only grand slam that allows non-ticketed fans to line up to get tickets to centre court, court 1 and court 2 on the day of play. With only 500 seats for each court, however, you have to get up a lot earlier than I did. Specifically, you need to spend the night camping in Wimbledon park to get those tickets.

In addition to the 1500 or so tickets mentioned above, there are also 6000 ground passes given out every day. Ground passes allow you onto the ground and you can see any match at any of the other 16 courts (though only 14 were in play this year as they are building a new court # 2), as well as giving you the option to line up for standing room for Court 2.

This year, Wimbledon has instituted a queuing system to prevent "queue jumpers." Figures that if anyone was going to invent a better way to queue, it would be the British. But seriously, the queuing system is a lot like how some places do lining up for concert tickets - you arrive and are given a card showing your place in line. Those who get the premium court tickets get wrist bands as well.

Arriving at around 7:45 at Wimbledon park, I was number 3,890 in line, so no wrist band for me. I got was my queue card and "Guide to Queuing," a booklet that tells you how to line up (in case you didn't already know).

There was a group of 8 guys in line who had bags full of ice and cans Carlsberg beer, and 8:30 in the morning. I guess that's one way to have breakfast at Wimbledon. (Only North American's will probably get that joke).

Around 9:30 we started moving, the line snaking its way from Wimbledon park through the Wimbledon golf course, for the tournament in use as a car park and eventually over a bridge and up to the ticket office. £20 and about an hour and a half later, and I was in the grounds of Wimbledon.

Checking the schedule of play I saw that Canadian Frank Dancevic is playing American Bobby Reynolds on court 18, starting at noon. I took a quick wander around the site and grab a bite to eat before heading over and getting my seats. There is no reserved seating (save for a few seats for player's families and trainers) in the courts, so it's first come first serve. I got a seat one row back (there's only three rows) about 10 feet from centre court.

About 10 minutes before noon the ball boys and girls (ball kids? - what's politically correct here?), line judges and chair umpire come out and start getting ready for the match. I couldn't help but feel that in their jackets with the white striping, all the line judges and umpires look like people who lived in The Village from the freaky 1960s The Prisoner.

With a few minutes to go before noon, Frank Dancevic and Bobby Reynolds arrived and took their seats on the sidelines. The chair umpire looked up at the sky and frowns. Clouds were rolling in and there were drops of rain falling. He delayed starting the match to see what the weather would do.

Luckily the clouds pass without releasing their rain onto us, and play started just a few minutes behind schedule.

Canadian Frank Dancevic serving. Wild hair, no?

American Bobby Reynolds, getting ready to receive. He looks suspiciously like actor Ryan Gosling, but I knew it couldn't be because Ryan Gosling is Canadian, and wouldn't pose as an American tennis player, even if he is researching a role. In the foreground you see one of the ball-children... or is it ball-young-adults?

I was cheering for Frank Dancevic as he is Canadian, and was wishing I had a little Canadian flag to wave when an American woman sat down beside me. She obviously was going for the American, and brought out her little American flag to wave, which brought snickers from the British folks in the crowd. That made me glad I didn't have my flag.

Now it is here that I should probably make an admission. I don't know much about tennis. I know that between two and four people stand on opposite sides of a net and hit a ball back and forth using a racquet, which for the first 10 years of my life I thought was a toy that one used to simulate guitar playing when a cool song came on the radio. When the tennis balls are not being used, they can apparently be tossed in parks to make dogs run endlessly after them and tire themselves out.

I only knew that Frank Dancevic was Canadian because there was a little Canadian flag beside his name on the schedule of play, and on seeing that I seemed to vaguely recall his name being mentioned in sports broadcasts in Canada after they had covered hockey, baseball, basketball, football (both American and Canadian), soccer, lacrosse, auto racing, track and field, swimming, kayaking, skiing, tiddle-winks, competitive eating and contract bridge. But I never let my ignorance get in the way of my blind patriotism, so I was all out cheering for Dancevic.

Now, "all-out cheering" at tennis matches is a very subdued affair. It appears that mostly you get to say the phrase, "Come on, Frank" at points when play was not happening, and clapping politely at the end of a point if your man got the point. One time some guy said, "That's the way, Bobby," and I must admit I think I saw some raised eyebrows in the crowd, no doubt thinking that abandoning the tried and true "Come on, <insert name here>" was just not cricket.

The first few minutes of the first set Dancevic looked strong, but couldn't close. It's a good thing I had a basic understanding of the rules, because if I had formed an opinion of the rules based on Dancevic's play, I would have assumed that the point of the game is to get the other player out of position and then hit the ball into the net. However, Dancevic managed to settle down and won the first set.

During the second set at a pause in play he went and lay down on the sidelines.

"Kind of a strange time to have a rest," I thought. Turns out he had injured his left oblique, a muscle so mysterious they named it with a synonym of obscure. A trainer came out, sprayed some stuff on Frank's side and applied a bandage. Not sure why the bandage, perhaps it's like when you were a kid and you hurt your knee, your mom would put on a bandaid even if the skin wasn't broken, just to make you feel better.

Anyway, after that the match continued, but Dancevic didn't look the same, and after a tightly fought tie-break during the 2nd set which he lost, Frank lost the next two sets and the match 4-6, 7-6 (12-10), 6-4, 6-4.

Strangely, I probably know more about women's tennis than men's tennis. I think that has to do with the fabulous set of blonde clones coming out of the former soviet countries, who when not playing tennis seem to be on TV advertising expensive watches. As such, the next match I went to watch, which was already in progress, was between Russian Elena Dementieva and Italian Maria Elena Camerin. As the match was already in play and folks had staked out their seats, I had to watch from inglorious vantage points like through a hole in the fence or over a hedge. Given the youth and grace of the players, it made me feel a little like a dirty old man, peeping tom...

Camerin, who some drunks in the hedges with me kept cheering on with a chant of "CAMEROON," pronouncing it like the African country, always a popular chant during the FIFA World Cup.

Dementieva. Pretty.

After Dementeiva won, I decided to grab some food and try out a few of the traditions of Wimbeldon, specifically Pimms and Strawberries and Cream.

I'm not really sure what Pimm's is, but it was a brownish, cold liquid poured into a cup with ice, mint and a slide of lemon and lime. It tasted a little like cold tea. I don't mean iced tea. I mean hot tea that has gone cold. Like all strange, foreign foods I don't know, it was worth trying, and then it was worth switching over to beer.

It's only £3.80 for a pint of Grolsch. That's actually not too steep a price compared to the price of a pint in a nice bar in central London. I'm used to be gouged at sporting events. This price was just a small gash.

After finishing off my strawberries and cream, I took a wander around, taking in the sites.

The sun was beating down and I was starting to fear sun stroke, so I staked out a chair in one of the covered courts. The match in progress finished up and I looked at my order of play to see who was up next. "Oh, I know that name," I said, reading that Amelie Mauresmo from France was set to play at this court.

I watched most of the first set, which Mauresmo lost before going on to win 4-6, 6-1 and 6-1 over Virginia Ruano Pascual of Spain. I noticed that most people were doing what I was doing, hopping from match to match without really watching any one in full. Other than the Dancevic-Reynolds match, I didn't see any match from beginning to end.

I hopped in an out of a few more matches as the sun started to go down and the shadows started to get long.

I looked at my watch. 6:30 in the evening. I grabbed some food and a couple pints of Grolsch, and headed up onto the hill overlooking the big screen TV attached to court 1. For those of us with ground passes, this was really the only way to see the action on the main courts. When I arrived, Roger Federer was playing, and the Swiss fans were cheering loudly.

Federer won easily. The TV switched over to the match between David Ferrer and Igor Andreev. Along the bottom of the screen scrolled the notification:

Centre Court and Court 1 resale tickets are now available. The cost is £5 and the proceeds go to charity

Folks with tickets from the top courts who decide to leave can put their showcourt tickets back into circulation. In the evening, those inside the grounds can then buy these tickets at a low price to get a chance to see action on one of the big courts.

I thought about. After all, £5 is a small price to pay to get a chance to see one of the main courts at Wimbledon, even to just see the building.

I decided against it though. The sun was going down, leaving most of the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in shade, but it was still sunny on the hill. In front of me the action played out on the big screen, with the Centre Court building behind, and off in the distance a church steeple in Wimbledon. Off to my left I could see London - Westminster and the London Eye, "The City" with the Gherkin standing tall, the Docklands with the tall buildings at Canary Wharf and the four white stacks of the now defunct Battersea Power Station. Behind me a pond and water feature gurgled away.

Kids played in the grass, rolling down the hill. Young adults laughed and flirted as they drank their beers and Pimms. A couple of kids who worked on the grounds took a nap after a long day of work. Two couples grabbed a picnic table, brought out four glasses and a bottle of Champagne and uncorked it with a pop.

The sun was warm. The grass beneath my body was soft. My drinks were cold.

Nah, forget Centre Court. This was the place to be.