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light just as Paris is in spring. You don’t find signature restaurants as you do in the “City of Lights,” but pub life in the city of “Big Ben,” is certainly not a bad life.

You can stay in a hotel in London, the most expensive or something modest and becoming, and then grab a train or the tube to Wimbledon. My first trip I remember boarding a train at Bayswater station to Putney Bridge and then a double decker bus to Wimbledon village.

It was nice bumping into old friends from the U. S. at the Press Centre including Edwin Pope, an Athens native, who was the sports columnist for the Miami Herald and, of course, Furman Bisher of the Atlanta Journal.

It was Bisher who introduced me to a local lady, Elizabeth Robins, who rented rooms, a bed and breakfast arrangement, to sportswriters. It was cheaper than any lodging facility and much more convenient. I had brought over from France a couple of bottles of duty-free wine which I shared with Elizabeth and her college age daughter. They introduced me to their neighbors and booked dinner at a couple of neighborhood restaurants. Nothing like being immersed into a comingling of curious visitors and the local gentry.

The competition at a Grand Slam tennis event is as good as it gets and the politeness of the spectators leaves you with a sense of gratitude that, John McEnroe’s behavior notwithstanding, manners are respected and expected at one of the world’s great sports events.

Wimbledon is where they still refer to the competitors as ladies and gentlemen. Wimbledon, the village, offers browsing at its best. Wimbledon Common is one of the largest areas of common land in London. Men often wear coats and ties to the matches.

And, the “Bobbies,” the police, walk around unarmed.