Wimbleseen, Wimbledon

Next thing you know, it’ll be Wimbledon (and then Christmas). Ah, memories. Remember when the merest sight of Bjorn Borg would send you scurrying to a parent’s side demanding a new tennis racket because the one they bought you during Wimbledon the previous year somehow got repeatedly smashed against the ground and then thrown into a skip about fifteen minutes after the tournament ended and everyone started playing football again? And they’d take you to the cheapest supermarket in town and buy you a £1.99 plastic racket with the strings just drawn on, because they weren’t stupid you know, and you’d lose your temper and burn your sister’s doll’s house to the ground? Remember? That was one of the great things about childhood – you could become fanatical about something just because you once happened to see someone else doing it. Fishing, kite-flying, skate-boarding, Egyptology, it didn’t matter. You merely had to announce that you were now ‘into it’ and that was that. As an adult, you have to be more circumspect. If you suddenly decide to take up windsurfing, say, you’ll need to have done some research. It’s no good just saying you saw it on TV one night and liked the look of it. People will want spiritual reasons, cost projections, health benefit analyses. And worse, you’ll have to fork out your own windsurf boat or whatever they call them. I for one plan to buck this trend. Come Wimbledon, I’ll be out there in me gutties with an old baldy ball, knocking it against the side of the house and pretending I’ve got a beard. And you know what? If every jaded adult in the whole country did likewise, maybe this rough old world would lose some of its edges. All right, maybe not. But it would be bloody funny.