Farewell Middle Sunday

Bill Simons

Mine is a tennis life.

Yet my favorite day of the year has precious little to do with the sport. Every summer for decades, I’d fly to London and immediately immerse myself in frenzied days covering Wimbledon.

Then on the seventh day came Middle Sunday, beloved Middle Sunday, with its embracing stillness: such an oasis of calm, a time of renewal. But I didn’t exactly rest. You see, for me, for 35 years, the greatest part of Middle Sunday was meeting up with my cherished cousins Tim and Jeanne, who are Londeners.

Every year I’d make the hour-long train and tube trek across town. Leaving leafy upper-crust Wimbledon with all its proper petunias, I’d venture out to the gritty, bustling Highbury-Islington district and my cousins’ welcoming townhouse, with its enchanting garden – a tranquil haven that always seemed to be blooming with a pastel array of English floral triumphs.

Tim and Jeanne were a jolly, engaging gateway to the wonders of English culture. Each year we’d set off on a soul-renewing adventure. They had an old, very English barge, and, picnic in hand, they’d take me on post-Victorian journeys up the Thames. We’d drift by white swans and riverside homes graced by impeccable lawns and ancient trees.

One year I ventured far to the north to Yorkshire, to join them at their grandson’s high school graduation. From there we navigated through narrow, twisting country lanes lined by hedge groves until at last we emerged at their horse farm, a rustic treasure that had been in the family for generations.

Filled with massive mahogany tables and paintings celebrating past grandeur, the farm offered stunning views of the undulating English countryside, a working stable and a country kitchen to die for. It drew a cadre of friends for chatty meals with good drink and common history references that for hours zoomed far over my head.

Plus, there were endless stretches of magical moors that stirred my soul. Traipsing by sheep and climbing stone walls and fences, in timeless moments here on this fabled windswept island, it was hard not to envision Wuthering Heights and Mr. Shakespeare.

Another year, back in town, we went to a sixteenth-century chapel in the heart of London, where a choir sang Anglican hymns. Rarely, to my ear, has the human voice sounded so splendid.

Sometimes we’d venture to the city of Salisbury, which dates to the eleventh century, and its massive cathedral, or head southeast to Kent for an intimate lunch with folks connected to the British cinema. Other years we’d drive past Stonehenge to Wilton for lunch and an impromptu visit to a betting parlor to back a favored pony.

Other years we’d check out a local tennis tournament or a troupe of nimble circus vagabonds, or just stay put and pick up our ongoing conversation where we’d left off the year before. Our backyard chats intertwined the threads of life and culture that are the essence of the Anglo-American cloth. Also there were regular reminiscences about an eight-person, six-week Mt. Rushmore-or-bust station wagon journey across America that we’d somehow managed to survive when we were kids.

Of course I’d regale my cousins with tales of Wimbledon: pressroom snippets, Tea Room twists and daring interviews with Bill Clinton, Johnny Carson and Billie Jean King. “So what are Serena, Federer and McEnroe really like?” my cousins would ask. They’d delight me with their lilting English and imaginative tennis takes: “Agasino,” said Jeanne, “Oh he’s scruffy. He needs a hair wash and a bath, but he plays with a good sporting instinct. My old aunt is just potty about him. I just hope he doesn’t absolutely twitch off.”

One year, I informed the prickly press handlers at Buckingham Palace that my stepmother had driven an ambulance in London during World War II. Miraculously I soon became the only American journalist credentialed for a tennis exhibition at the palace hosted by Prince Andrew and Fergie and featuring McEnroe and Borg. A bit impressed but rather mortified, my cousins patiently provided me with a don’t-you-dare-screw-up primer on royal etiquette and how Americans might somehow avoid disaster when mingling with, as the Brits say, “the good and great.”

Every Middle Sunday, Tim, Jeanne and I renewed our special family friendship – our deep bond – and set off on adventures in a kingdom with countless marvels.

Oh, how I will miss Middle Sunday.