Mum’s account of Wimbledon continued:
The trips to London, were one of the great excitements of my sister’s and my lives, and in my case unfortunately they ended when Aunty Mary and Uncle Len decided to come and live in Wallasey when I was seven. Looking back, my mother and father had a fortnight’s rest from their two offspring and, as they were very keen on tennis, each day, they visited the Wimbledon tennis tournament seeing such stars as Susan Lenglen (who made history by keeping the king and queen waiting for half an hour – she was never asked to play at Wimbledon again), Bunny Austin, Fred Perry, Helen Wills Moody and many other stars of the twenties – all amateurs playing for the love of the sport – the ladies serving underhand and they were being dressed in longish gowns. My parents when in London also liked to visit the British Museum, to which they took Sheila and myself. At night they would go to see the dog racing where they bet most earnestly 6d or possibly 1/- on a likely dog which they fancied. One of the first memories I can ever remember is going to the Circus on Wimbledon Common with Aunty Mary and on the way back pretending that I was a Baboon butting my Aunty along the pavement; she, having no children, treating the whole incident most indulgently but my mother was far from pleased. I also remember seeing the first buses – they had trollies like the trams but did not run on rails.
The other vivid memory I have of London was going to Mass at the Brompton Oratory and being far from carried away by the solemnity of the occasion. Looking back I was only very little. My mother unceremoniously removed me to the porch where I sat quite happily on the floor playing buses with the bus tickets around the edge of what seemed to me, a giant mat, though it was probably quite small to an adult.
The stories about tennis seem to have been those recalled by her mother and father – with tennis stars of the 1920s. The incident with Suzanne Langlen (1899-1938) took place in 1926, while Helen Wills Moody was a Wimbledon champion from 1927 to 1933. Bunny Austin reached the men’s final in 1932, and perhaps this was the last time that her parents went to Wimbledon. Fred Perry, from a more modest background than many tennis players at Wimbledon, was very unpopular when he turned professional in 1936. Mum remained interested in tennis; in the 1960s and 1970s the television was always on in the June fortnight of Wimbledon, while she was even watching tennis when in the “care home” in her final years.
Joan Boughey Recalled 