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| Venue Entry Security |
After attiring myself in the lovely uniform and shoving some bran flakes down my gullet I popped into the
local caff at the end of my road for a take away cup of tea where the man who
works there almost had his eyes popping out at the sight of me. A pretty easy journey to Wimbledon and
an hour later I was standing in a nice long queue to get into ‘Fort Apache’ to
go through security screening.
I bumped into two of
my team and we wandered over to the rendezvous spot where our the head high
honcho security lady was having a briefing with the team leaders. She told us to go and have a cup of tea
and come back later.
On my way into Fort
Apache I could see Court 18 which was being strimmed and then we spotted Centre
Court on the big screen. This was
being mowed half an hour before the gates opened! And the masses of dancers were being given their final instructions,
the last of which was “Sit down and pretend to be a member of the public so we
could only assume they were some sort of flash mob.
Being the first day
it was all somewhat random. We had
only really just been allocated our Team Leaders and were having our first
briefing when the announcement “Open the gates” came over the tannoy. Loud and clear! We were at the opposite end of the
grounds from Gate 10 (our new home for the next 4 hours). Our job is to get people through the
gates!
Our Pack Leader, Ruth, said that we would be winging it
today as it was day 1 but our main objective was to “Get them all in as soon as
possible so we can all go and watch some tennis.” Like it!
Sock Monkey stood at the x-ray machine for, “Good
morning. How are you? Make sure
you have nothing in your pockets” four hours. We were accompanied by Royal Marine Commandoes, the
Parachute Regement and the Navy.
We felt very save with the big burly squaddies. One of them asked me why on earth
anyone would want to volunteer to do this.
Some of the general public were stu-pid. Like the woman who proceeded to take
Every. Single. Thing. Out of her bag and dump it in the tray. And the man who, just as he was about
to walk through the metal detector asked me if having his wallet and mobile
phone in his pocket was OK.
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| Delicious! Its all that was left |
Once everyone had arrived, eventually – God there were
thousands of them – we had our lunch break. We were taken into the bowels of the building next to
Centre Court. Down a ramp by the
side of the building, past the bins, through a delightful access tunnel to the
Ball Boy rest room. Where they had
no hot food left. We decided to
decamp and go to the main restaurant only to be told that secturity (ie US)
weren’t allowed to ‘dine’ in there.
We traipsed back to the tunnel for some slops and were told that we had
been ‘Stood down’. Hooray! Free
tennis for us!
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| David Ferer |
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| Andy Murray (a bit sideways) |
Four of us went to Court 18 and saw David Ferrer and Felipop
Lopaz beat some Poles. Then we
went to Court 2 to see the end of Li Na and Hutchenova’s match before Andy and
Jamie Murray’s doubles match agaist Jurgen Metzer and his partner. Towards the end of the first set all
the volunteers (in uniform) were kicked out for the paying punters so I had to
leave. My three new friends had
changed their tops so they could stay. Guess what Sock Monkey s shoving in the
bag tomorrow a change of t-shirt.
I got back home (someone standing outside my flats “Are you
in the Olympics?” duh can’t you seeeee what I’m wearing?) and watched the
Murray brothers lose.
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