A ticket to ride

Thus it was that, having taken our chance in the annual lottery for Centre Court seats, been allocated two for ladies semi-finals day and subsequently written cheques for a total of £216 for tickets and train travel, Mrs W and I set off from Tamworth station last Thursday morning.
Remind me again how this country thinks it has the public transport infrastructure to host the 2012 Olympic Games, or the 2018 football World Cup?
After a relatively painless 80-minute journey during which our reserved seats were already occupied and our tickets were not checked (keep that thought in mind....), we arrived at Euston at 10.42am.
Regular visitors to The Championships will know that the nearest station to the All-England Club is not Wimbledon but Southfields, two stops up the District Line and reached from Euston via Victoria.
Except that on this sunny Thursday morning, with upwards of 30,000 people heading for SW 19, there was an electrical fault on the District Line and no service - at all.
Harassed London Underground staff were directing passengers to the overground service via Waterloo to Wimbledon, a detour we made in the company of two middle-aged American ladies and an Australian gentleman. Heaven knows what they thought.
We arrived at Wimbledon station to find ourselves in the midst of a scrum of several hundred people standing at the front of the station, patiently queuing for the shuttle bus service to the All-England Club.
The queue was being marshalled by the sort of cheery Cockney who I have to confess brings out the worst in me ('move along now please, fill the gaps, ladies and gents, fill the gaps') and it took the better part of 35 minutes before we boarded a bus - I still suspect we could have walked it more quickly and saved ourselves £7.
Having then been stuck in a queue of buses negotiating their way around the one-way system in Wimbledon town centre, we sat down on Centre Court at 12.59pm, just as Venus Williams and Elena Dementieva stepped on court.
The afternoon's tennis, in one of the best sporting theatres I have ever seen, was splendid, the Williams sisters asserting their superiority before rain brought an end to our afternoon just before 5.30pm.
As we had to get back to Euston for the 7.46pm train home, we could not afford to wait for play to resume and our journey back across London (on the now-repaired Underground, but still taking 90 minutes) was carried out on crowded rush-hour trains but in bright sunshine.
Which is when this story really starts.
Picture the scene. it's 7.34pm on the busy concourse of Euston station, 12 minutes before our train leaves.
Me: Can I just check the tickets to see what coach our seat reservations are in ?
Mrs W: What tickets?
Me: The train tickets.
Mrs W: I haven't got the train tickets, you have.
Me: But you always have the train tickets when we go on long journeys because you don't trust me to keep them safe.
Mrs W: No, I haven't got the train tickets, I've got your wallet. The train tickets were separate.
Me: So where are they?
Mrs W: How do I know?
Me: Oh dear (or something like that).
Long pause.
Me: They weren't in that plastic bag we threw in a rubbish bin by Court Two, were they? I thought it was empty.
Mrs W: Oh dear (or something like that). I think they were.
Me: Oh dear (or something like that).
So what do we do? The tickets are bought and paid for, the money has been deducted off my credit card but we have no proof. A standard single ticket bought on the day costs £38. There is one more train from Euston to Tamworth tonight. It leaves at 10.05pm, two-and-a-half hours away.
Me: (making a mental note to go to Confession on Saturday): We could always risk it and be honest if the conductor asks us. After all, it's not like we haven't paid.
Mrs W (who, being a rush-hour commuter, has a pathological dislike of train conductors): Oh, go on, then.
So we did. And do you know, dear reader? Despite promising a full ticket check when we left Euston, the conductor did not put in an appearance in our carriage in the middle of the train at any time during the 100-mile, 80-minute journey.
Suffice it to say, a bottle of wine accompanied our evening meal when we got home.
I must stress that no laws were broken here. We weren't fare-dodging, the tickets were bought and paid for, Sir Richard and Co have their money.
But if Messrs Nadal and Federer think they were stressed on Sunday evening, I reckon we know how they feel.