It’s been a funny old day. The man with the giant tennis racket has been in again.

Showers were never far away and the roof of Centre Court proved invaluable yet again for allowing play to continue with as few interruptions as possible.

Elsewhere in SW19 we have been bedeviled by on-off bursts taunting us with dry spells just long enough to allow us to uncover, inspect and dress the court and sometimes play to start only for another sharp downpour to sweep in.

Looking across to Henman Hill, I can see a sea of umbrellas. And all the TV cameras on the roof of the press centre opposite are wrapped in plastic. This has been a tricky set-up to predict with precision as to whether these multiple showers would clip us or not.

It isn’t the first time I’ve worked with forecasters. Years ago I did 12-hour shifts recording a weather forecast service you could ring in to, where the first had to be in place by 6am.

I have vivid memories of waking up at 2am in the shared house in Loughton, Essex then tramping bleary-eyed downstairs and out into the night to scrape the ice from my car windscreen. The M11 slipway would always be wreathed in fog worthy of a Basil Rathbone rendition of the The Hound of the Baskervilles pressing against the windscreen and swirling in the headlights, juggernauts thundering past as you joined the motorway.

This is more civilised. Let’s face it, is anything more so?

Forecasters Steve, Tom, Pierre and Alexis are a good team to work with, providing tea and humour in equal measure. We watch the covers being inflated to stop the grass courts sweating.

At the end of the day the grass is watered, which might seem odd given the exertions to keep them dry but the critical thing is for the ground staff to know the exact amount of water being put in.

All to enable the optimum conditions for world-class players to perform on.