All my seasons of grass

I could measure the years weeks and days of my life by the green-ness of the grass before it fades to yellows and browns the would-be heroes the faces the fashions that graced the paths the courtyards the hanging baskets the cafeterias all the memories crammed into two weeks of watching the green and white stripes of summer recede into shadows

as the rain spattered our umbrellas we sheltered with more strawberries and cream and Pimms and watched the English gent and the scruffy Scots boy buckle under the strain and once long ago on an outside court we three drunken students were the only spectators hearing distant cheers for Ginny and the Queen and why would you wish to be anywhere else but Wimbledon that year or any year Queen or no Queen

the year Guy and I saw the Duchess of Gloucester hesitant pausing in the corridors above centre court to mouth platitudes as two Amazonian women combatants already zoned-out swept by holding their own court trying not to notice the lady in a wheelchair as we waited for Sue to finish her interview for the BBC and she smiled and stood aside and said sorry you haven't missed anything

when Sarah left her baby with a friend we sat Centre-courtside more enthralled by the Roddick legs than the tennis and one time we saw Rafa large of presence but a mere speck a flash of white in the distance and Novak limping off court done spent just before the rain fell again

did we have a TV the year Christine romped to victory or was it wind-up radio no matter I thought one day I would be her only smaller neater but just as good
holding the trophy wearing a Tinling dress and frilly underwear

the year of the Summer cold I pretended it was flu but he couldn't didn't understand
why I couldn't wouldn't get out of bed for a fortnight eyes fixed on tiny screen in the corner of the room hidden from sunlight only stirring for my earl greys

the year of the caravan holding the radio to my ear flapping at the daytime butterflies and night time moths my heart bumping through a vital tiebreak

and the time when with no permanent address and in agonies of pain lying prone on Sarah's sofa wishing I was behind it as my man struggled again and every bad shot another stab in my back

pausing at Waterloo station to snatch a drink in time to see Timbo shaking hands at the net with Pat the Rafter a cutie with a white streak in his hair and any which way hero won that match but not many more and so on to the year when I thought I would never recover from that disastrous three-day rain-filled semi and how on earth did he survive the trauma I could not

then on to the shiny new monstrous glazed ceiling creeping inching across the sky a perfection of engineering design erasing the history-book scenes of long skirts and white flannels huge raquets and the shock horror headlines as Tim's great-grandmother bucked the trend by serving overarm

and now another year with the scruffy boy-turned-man unloved but loveable with legs everything a man's legs should be as we wait and wait and on it goes and will I be here to see it another time another year measured by a square of grass under the same old cloud-filled rain-soaked sun-bright Wimbledon sky how beautiful how wonderful and how awful when it's all over again and we say goodbye hallowed turf until next time and so much can happen will happen before you seed and re-seed

leaving me with the detritus of all the years of my life jumbled in a confusion of events of love and loss sickness and health played out in these damp sunny sun-less climes over and over until finally it is done only when I am done with

this England this Wimbledon and all my seasons of grass