Country diary: Butterflies at the tennis? Now that’s what I call a winner

Normally I’d follow it, tracking its scattery path, willing it to land. But not here. Not on Court 5. Not on break point.

The Community Sport Centre at Roehampton, the Wimbledon-qualifying venue, isn’t butterfly habitat. Not like Barnes Common, which was teeming with little flutterers when I made my way from the station. Here the habitat is human-oriented: tents, green canvas, the evocative plock of ball on string. But then butterflies can turn up anywhere.

A flash of movement, a glitch in the matrix. It skitters about in that unpredictable way they have, a sandy orange scrap on a zigzag path. Painted lady. Lot of them about this year.

Butterflies – high summer on the wing – lift the casual observer’s heart in a way that other insects don’t. Never mind their unmatched ferocity when defending their patch – they’re pretty, and they neither swarm nor bite. Butterflies are fine with us.

This painted lady I’m watching flirts with the server’s head. Imagine this on Centre Court, SW19. The player pulls out of their serve. Andrew Castle says something annoying. Mirth is unconfined.

There are no such shenanigans here – but the painted lady heralds a flurry of activity. Three small whites float around, apparently aimless in the sweltering heat. A tiny orange pair appear briefly, their flight paths intertwining. A true lepidopterist would know them instantly from the flight style and general impression; I hazard a guess at small copper and leave it at that, content enough with the sighting.

No sooner have they fluttered out of view than a blue-green stealth bullet zips across my sightline, as if rebuking the butterflies for their lack of speed and manoeuvrability. Emperor dragonfly, like a British hopeful in the 1990s, no sooner seen than gone.

A clean winner down the line elicits an ooh of excitement. I want to draw everyone’s attention to the aeronautical miracle that’s just whizzed past. But there’s a time and place for everything. So I give a small internal cheer, and settle in for the second set.

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