Wimbledon

It's a little sticky this morning, I bet there was a lot of tossing in the night...

I'm sure there were many who were faced with the need to perform the Nadal manoeuvre, you know what I mean - the man is permanently pulling his underwear out from between his bottom cheeks.

Are you all entranced by Wimbledon? All the hunky men and pretty girls and of course the Williams sisters who fall into a category all of their own.

I have long been a fan of Wimbledon, having played tennis to a very high standard at school, I can sit and enjoy the skill shown by the likes of Federer and Tsonga, not forgetting the man whose name I can't hear without answering 'give the dog a bone' - Novak Djokovik.

I have been interested in the history of the game too and why certain phrases and behaviour have become synonymous with tennis.

I think what many people do not know is that many top class tennis players are actually not fully human - the inventors of Andy Murray are constantly tinkering with his programming trying to make him appear more human and they are also trying to fix that loud noise that Maria Sharapova makes every time she hits the ball.

This level of augmentation in tennis stars dates back to the mid 1970's when the first half man, half robot player appeared at Wimbledon - Bjorn Borg. A fully human player like Jimmy Connors had no resistance to this new style of play in fact he soon learned that resistance was futile.

It was the introduction of cybernetic implants that gave us the ultimate queen Borg, Martina Navratilova.

The game has certainly changed over many years, the introduction of a hawk at Wimbledon to keep the pigeons away had an interesting side effect as the hawk is also the deadliest enemy of the Wombles, who are now faced with extinction very much like other little furry creatures of Wimbledon Common who are facing total annihilation.

The exception is a little brown mouse-like creatures called a Lett. Very often in the past you would be watching a game in progress and one would run across the court and the umpire would point it out by crying Lett! The game would stop whilst the creature returned to its burrow and then all would return to normal. Now, if a Lett appears, you hear a short pinging noise as a laser beam shoots out from the umpires chair, incinerating the poor critter in its tracks.

Luckily, Letts are very randy and they have litters of up to 40 babies at one time so I think that laser beam will be kept busy for a while.

What else can I teach you about tennis? I'm sure you also knew that the word 'love' that is used to indicate no score is derived from the French word for the egg - l'oeuf. You see a zero is sort of egg shaped, so it all makes perfect sense.

Did you also know that Serena and Venus Williams are the only two players in the world who can legally enter the Ladies Doubles and the Mixed Doubles as a team? The original ball-girls.

Enough chit chat, go grab a racquet or if you don't have a racquet go make one - it's quite easy to make a racquet - I find dropping the cutlery drawer on the floor will suffice.

Now you have your racquet all you need to do is grab your balls and play.

Ooops - new balls please!



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