My first weeks at Wimbledon

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Yay to the SA Cricket Team, boo to the Sharks! Yay to the hot weather today and boo to the R100 it cost to play on a court for an hour! Yay to having a job and boo to working tomorrow (Sunday)!
Played tennis with cousin Garyth Turner, he was so brilliant and I was so useless, he would definitely have beaten me had we played a match. It was definitely the nicest day since I have been here and I spent every minute outside. Joy! This afternoon, I went up to the Wimbledon Village to meet another girl on the Management Team for the Wimbedon Shop. She has a flat in the middle of Wimbledon Village amongst all the little cafes, restaurants, wonderfully exquisite but expensive pubs like the Dog and Fox or the Rose and Crown, upmarket clothes shops and so forth. She and I bought a beverage at the local Off Licence store and sauntered over to the Wimbledon common, a public piece of land (nearly like a park but longish grass and a little dam in the middle), where we lay about in the sun and spoke about a whole lot of rubbish. She was born in London but has resided in Portugal for the last seven years with her Mom, Dad and siblings. Her family still lives in Portugal but she has studied here and has worked at the Wimbledon Champs for many years and has slowly moved up the ranks. I have so enjoyed spending a bit of time with her.

There was a fair on in the Common too with merry-go-rounds, candy floss stands and those stalls where you can throw hoops over pegs and win awfully large teddy bears and other strange furry animals. Daisy and I made sure we had a 99, which is a soft serve with a flake in it, from Mr Whippy. Just like the jolly movies, not right? As I was off to buy tennis balls today, traffic was help up becaue of the police doing some work for charity, pulling an ambulance up a hill with their bodies. Other members of the force were running around with buckets asking for donations. It was a mixture of the first week at Stellenbosch (Jool) and something from WWF, what a weird country this is!

Other than that, I am working tomorrow at the Museum Shop for the whole day. Nice extra pocket money, which is great but a little irritated to work on a Sunday. Exhausted.Was invited to supper with the colleagues last night, made sure I behaved very well and cooked and cleaned, etc, while I was there. So enjoying spending time with some young, interesting British people. They have a certain humour which is something else. They do never get over the SA accent though. Every second person is trying to perfect my accent, you'd think they would be used to the South Africans by now. When I arrive at work, I get about one thousand "Howzit Bru"s and several "as well"s and "just now"s. It is hilarious!

Oh, also went out on Thursday to watch the very disappointing Sharks in action. It was SAFFA night at The Clapham Grand, a very larney club across the road from Clampham Junction train station. There were SA Rugby flags, Sharks, Stormers and Bulls posters, Springbok scarves all over the place, etc. I cannot believe there are so many South Africans here that businesses and establishments can make a fortune out of them. Saffa night was full, full, full. Hectic!