Wimbledon

Just to make things clear, I usually don’t watch TV except for DVDs (films and some music) and I take this principle so seriously that I don’t even have my TV connected to an aerial. To make it even more clear, I specifically avoid watching sporting events – I tend to find them particularly unpleasant.

That said, it just happened that I sat in front of a TV showing those excruciating last moments of the men’s final at Wimbledon that lasted for ever. As I sat there, sipping an espresso and chatting, I was progressively drawn into the images. I wasn’t paying as much attention to the game as to the players and to their features and expressions.

Their expressions surfaced, at times, an unmistakable anger that education and training soon would move out of sight and, seeing them, I was transported to other times and places. I wasn’t watching anymore a tennis game in this civilised contemporary Britain, but gladiators fighting to death in a barren arena and adhered to the game as if I could expect to see one of them falling gushing blood and guts from a deadly, vicious blow.

When the retiarius achieved his victory with his net and trident, I could see the defeated Murmillon drop his shield and sword and sink into the ground just as Roddick sank into his chair. The time they took to speak was the time they needed to regain humanity.