The midnight view from the Wimbledon queue. Sean Zak One year ago, two words could describe my attitude as I laid down on a patch of grass southwest of London just before midnight: jealous and annoyed . Annoyed with myself for packing so light and jealous of the woman to my left, looking all cozy zipped up in a sleeping bag, a pillow under her head and over-ear headphones helping her rest.
I had been so confident and ignorant as I’d left home that night with only the must-haves: phone, wallet, AirPods, mobile charger. No pillow, no book, no water, no blanket. I had spotted this woman — seemingly a London resident — on the train and followed closely behind her cooler and backpack from the Southfields Station as she walked toward the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon.
We swam upstream against the giddy spectators, drunk on berries and cream and a straight-sets win for Novak Djokovic over Stan Wawrinka. We bobbed and weaved for 15 minutes through those lucky folks headed home to their plush mattresses before coming upon the entrance to The Queue, where we promptly received a notecard and direction to our accommodation for the night — a 10’ x 10’ plot of turf that marks our spot in the nightly lineup to buy tennis tickets. One thousand, five hundred thirty-nine people were ahead of us, which amounted to one big snake of tents in a field.
My train mate plopped down on the other side of a walkway from me and before long her eyes were closed, her hat pulled down .