I went to Wimbledon!

My son's girlfriend knew I'd never been and knew I wanted to, so she organised for us to go together as a late birthday present. She'd got tickets for Court 2 where we saw some women's and some mixed doubles, including Victoria Azarenka and Jamie Murray here. 

I had no idea how much information comes at your brain when tennis is 3D and life-sized and how much you really have to concentrate to take in what's going on. I had no idea how fast that makes the time go. So it was late afternoon when she explained the returns system to me: people who had centre court tickets leave because they want to watch the England/Croatia football game then their seats are re-sold to anyone who can be bothered to queue.

Standing on Henman Hill we watched Rafa Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro's second game tie-break on screen and decided we definitely could be bothered to queue. Six games later we took our lucky seats down near the net. The speed! The reactions! The power! 

And most extraordinary of all, the profound human silence just before a ball is played and 15,000 people stop breathing.