A trip to Wimbledon to watch the tennis is a must for every summer in London, so I was very excited to have a day out on court 2 last week. The weather is such a crucial factor of any Wimbledon experience, unless you are lucky enough to have the golden ticket which gets you into the Centre Court where the roof ensures all day play. Otherwise you are at the mercy of the rain and court 2 is exposed to the elements so we were keeping our fingers crossed. Continue reading
How do we get tickets for Wimbledon? That’s a question I am often asked and the answer is either to get there very, very early in the morning to queue or to put in for the public ballot the year before you want to go. I was lucky enough to win 2 tickets in the ballot for Court 1 for last Friday so excitement levels were high! Continue reading
The London heatwave continues much to everyone’s surprise and there was not a single rain stoppage at Wimbledon – must be that centre court roof acting as a anti rain device! This week’s blog focuses on the elephants and the tennis, with a street party and some Pride thrown in.
All the elephants that have been scattered around London for several weeks now were gathered together for a final parade before being auctioned off for the Indian elephant charity. I went down, as did so many other 
Londoners, as they were an irresistible sight. I’ve limited myself to just a few new photos but there were 250 to delight the snappers! The location was the old Chelsea Hospital which is famous for being the home of the annual Chelsea Flower Show but more famous for being the home of the Chelsea Pensioners. The hospital which was more a place of refuge for servicemen, was founded in 1682 by Charles 11 for veterans. It still does the same work for about 400 residents tho’ has accepted a servicewoman (!) and the 
average age is 83 for these famous red coats that we can see out and about and on special occasions. It’s a very large and grand site that you can wander round with a museum and shop so I’ve included one photo of one particularly impressive section.
is a fun way to watch on the big screen – see photo. We then went onto court 1 to rest our weary bottoms (!) and saw the wonderful Martina Navratilova in the invitation d
oubles, and then Pat Cash in the invitation mens doubles – always good to see old champions at play. I love wandering around Wimbledon, Pimms in hand and we even caught sight of Nadal in the flesh as he waved to the crowds after his match.
ssive gay event which took over the centre of London with streets closed, amazing get up and huge fun being had – have a look at Trafalgar Square to see what I mean!
Bye for now, Sue http://itsyourlondon.co.uk/
So, second week after leaving work and this week’s highlights were: tennis, another street party, City of London Festival, Press Photographers exhibition and rain, rain, rain.
Wimbledon seemed to take up all of Sunday! It was compelling but also very hard to watch as a Roger fan, even from the sofa and goodness knows how exhausting it must have been to experience it in Centre Court. The rain added even more drama and gave us what must be one of the latest and darkest men’s finals to date and what is officially the longest.
Another street party – well more of a square party but that sounds rather dull and it certainly was not. It was in one of those amazingly beautiful London squares – all railings, greenery and surrounded by white stucco fronted terraces. For a modest entry price there was free drink, nibbles brought round as we stood and a chance to grill our local council members and MP on what’s happening with road closures, recycling, and other fascinating topics (!) to the sound of a jazz band. Some amount of drinking, meeting local residents and even nipping into the local pub after- good job it was only an 10 minute walk home and took place before the rain got set in.
A trip into the City for a friend’s work do led to a lucky find. We followed our ears which picked up jazz at 6pm just off Cheapside, very unusual in the serious surrounding of all the money making, and we found a Balkan jazz band playing in the Guildhall yard as part of the City of London Festival. Never heard of it before but it has free music over the summer across the City including on the steps of St Paul’s and at Liverpool Street Station to help out harassed commuters. Find more at http://www.colf.org/
The Press Photographers’ Exhibition in the National Theatre was sobering and interesting – sobering because of the number of stills and a video from Iraq and photos from Pakistan around the return of Benazir Bhutto. But also some great sport shots and quirky items. See attached: www.thepressphotographersyear.com/content/exhibition
And finally, rain, rain, rain. Annoying and always seems to lead to the break down of transport so I found myself and a friend stuck in Camden on Saturday for ages waiting for a bus home at 3.30am . Still there were lots of guys enjoying Gay Pride day long into the small hours so it certainly wasn’t dull. Inevitably decided on a taxi in the end and the sight of the little orange light was so welcome…
Sue