It's that time again. I don't pretend to be much of a sports fan. I suppose I like stuff, but most of the time I can find better things to do with my time. when I was a youngster it was a treat to have hours of Wimbledon coverage. You felt for two weeks you really could really get to know about the game. All those lager than life personalities. And Bjorn Borg. But seriously, was it a Golden Age, the Nastase-Connors-Borg-McEnroe-Cash-Becker Days. And Martina Navratilova, what a star? They used to play tennis in those days.
I get annoyed by the people who become instant experts for a fortnight but couldn't tell you who won the French Open, played just the other week at Flushing Meadow. I get really annoyed by the pubs advertising that they have tennis on the TV. Pubs, FFS - in the old days it was a time for men to escape down the pub while the women watched it on the TV indoors. When all houses just had one TV. As mine does now.
In the old days we all had our favourites. I was a McEnroe/Cash/Becker girl. My sister went for Borg/Wilander/Edberg. Andrea at school for Connors and that French geezer. It didn't matter what country they were from, they were our boys.
My cousin and her son, my godson, share my view but from a completely different angle. They are both good club players. He plays for the county, and has had commercial sponsorship. He'll be old enough to play in the Boys tournament next year, GCSEs permitting. I don't know if he's good enough.
They go to all sorts of tournaments in the strangest of places, where the star is the British number five and an unknown Croatian. My cousin gets annoyed when people say "Why does Tim Henman always lose?" "He doesn't," she says. "He wins plenty of tournaments that you've never heard of."
But it doesn't matter whether Tim Henman wins Wimbledon or not. He's not very good. Get over it. It'll be The Open (Golf) soon. I don't especially want Tim Henman to win. It doesn't make me unpatriotic. Okay, maybe I'm a hypocrite. (My appetite is whetted for the Rugby World Cup in Oz in October. Did you know that the England Rugby team, right now, is the best sporting team ever to have come from these Isles? The Aussies are still favourites, but never mind that!) I dislike the fact that Wimbledon has been turned into this excuse for waving the Union Flag - until Rudetski is knocked out, then he's a Canadian.
We will never be any good at tennis until it stops being such a class-ridden game. As I say, my godson is old enough next year to play in the Boys tournament, but he's from a background where GCSEs matter. A very modest background for a tennis player - his father's a teacher, his mother an ex-teacher now working in Local Government. I'm not sure that we need to be good at tennis. I just get bored by Wimbledon bores who suddenly become experts.
Of course, I'll watch some of the TV coverage. I like the Mixed Doubles. I'm right off the men's singles, especially all this crash-bang-wallop stuff. Bring back wooden rackets, I say.
I remember when tennis was fun to watch..
