Akh proved he once again has the lucky charm when it comes to winning Wimbledon tickets. This year he couldn’t go so I was very lucky that he offered them to me. Best thing was that it was on middle Saturday on Centre Court so not only did I not have to take a day off, we were also guaranteed some high caliber matches.

I met D fairly early so we could have a look at what was going on around the outside courts. A group of protesters in the queue, however, held us up a little bit – officials had decided to shut the gates so gate opening time was delayed for nearly an hour. I was impressed that the protesters were identified – apparently they had paint and other stuff hidden in bags to make their protest banners. This didn’t delay the start of play, however, nor dissuade anyone from visiting Wimbledon. There were sooo many people inside already by the time we made it inside the gates.

The weather, though a little bit sketchy this past week, had been clear enough that matches had been moving on schedule so as a result many of the outside courts had mostly doubles and junior matches. The biggest star that we saw, that I knew at any rate, was Tamarine Tanasugarn who was playing a doubles match. Because Wimbledon was so crowded today it was actually quite difficult to get around to many of the courts to see many other matches. Just as well D and I had our centre court tickets!

Our seats on centre court weren’t quite the last row … but they practically were! I didn’t mind though because it meant that I could come to Wimbledon. The good thing about our seats were that we were sat with a view of the Royal Box – and today a whole heap of sports starts were in the box including Martina Navratilova, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Kelly Holmes, Jonathan Edwards, Sachin Tendulkar, Sir Roger Bannister, Amy Williams (won gold at the Winter Olympics if you don’t know) and a whole host of rugby, football and cricket stars. We were also marking Armed Forces Day so there were 14 members of the armed forces, nominated for exceptional service, in the box.

Three matches on Centre court for us today. First up was women’s number one seed Caroline Wozniacki who defeated Aussie Jarmila Gajdosova fairly handily but I must say that I felt that Jarmila lost the match more than Caroline won it. Though Caroline had some good shots – it was Jarmila who was going for everything. Unfortunately her unforced errors outweighing her winners meant she went down … but at least she went down fighting.

Next up on court was Roger Federer who outclassed David Nalbandian. Roger was just pure class and it was great to see him so comfortable in his element. There is just such an ease to his game and its like he can just turn the power or touch on just like that.

And yes, there were the shirt taking off moments too …

Final game of the match was Novak Djokovic (the number two seed this year) against Marcos Baghdatis. I really find it hard to like Novak. In today’s match he came across a spoilt little boy, he even broke his racquet! Nice butt though …

Marcos did well to keep up with Novak but the actually game wasn’t the kind of match that was very entertaining even if it was quite a close one. There were lots of long drawn out and often unexciting rallies. D and I left at the end of the third set!

Socialite London has been around for a couple of years now and was set up as a members club to organise social events for members to mingle. Its aimed at young professionals who are perhaps wanting to expand their current social circle and in some ways it also seems to work as a singles mingles service the way it has profiles to “match” you to people who have similar interests, work / live in your area, etc. Su Yin invited me to an event they were holding tonight at the Graffik Gallery. I’ve never been into the Gallery before even if its in my hood – and I must admit the gallery, showcasing urban art, is quite cool.

Tonight’s event was a Workshop Party by Peter Dunne. Peter Dunne is a self-taught artist from Dublin with a particular skill in spray can painting. A skill he discovered when he was commissioned to do 300 pieces in a month and discovered he was only able to do it with spray painting. Think Banksy. Think those artists you see on the sidewalk who can create special images with just a few shakes of a spray can. This was what we were going to be learning tonight, gloves and face masks supplied.

In addition to the workshop we were promised a drinks reception and BBQ. They were very good at topping up everyone’s glasses or making the drink available to everyone but the BBQ was a shambles. There wasn’t any sort of order and the guy manning the BBQ wasn’t concerned about serving everyone in any sort of order. Fail number one.

Fail number two related to the actually spray painting part of the evening. The idea of the party was great, but the pulling it off was not so great. I’m not sure whether it was because more people turned up than expected by the space to watch the debrief and do the actual painting was very small. I was lucky to get a front spot for the debrief – I feel for those behind who probably couldn’t see anything!

To help with the painting Pete had also brought along plenty of templates and other tools. Although some people got quite creative and were building their own templates!

Then we moved on to the bit where we got to do our own painting. This really was a bit disorganised, not very well planned and not at all rehearsed. Because of the small space available in the court yard and the supplies, realistically only 4 or 5 people could paint at once (and there would have been about 20+ who paid to paint tonight.) Therefore, if you were an A-type personality and were willing to push your way to the front so to speak (and this went for both food and the art itself) then you’d be fine. The first group went in and they spent absolutely ages trying to paint something, if they didn’t like it they would start again, or if they were particularly selfish, would paint 3 or 4! After this had gone on for some time I could see that one of the organizers, the Nicole or something her name was, did eventually try to reign in the time people were spending painting but it was too late. It didn’t also help that the artist was quite friendly and willing to spend time individually – I mean it was nice that Pete was so friendly but he didn’t help with the turnover so to speak.

I had resigned myself earlier on to just watching, which really, was entertaining enough. There were some appallingly aggressive people at the event who were perfectly sociable and nice to talk to but put something in front of them and suddenly they turned a bit selfish. A couple of girls were treating the artist like their own special tutor forgetting there were actually other people who should have had a go too. The worst bit was when people started shouting for the paint cans instead of asking nicely for them – Black! Orange! Blue!

At least Su Yin and Shahid got in and painted something. That too was particularly amusing as Shahid was being competitive about whose painting was better. Boys!

James and I went down to support Jules and D run the London Marathon this year. I swear each year we have to get up earlier and earlier just to get a good spot at the marathon to see our runners.

The fact that Jules and D had quite disparate running times meant we were out by the side of the road for a long stretch. Just as well the sun was out … so I could work on my tan at the same time. Heh heh.

Well done boys.