I’ve got a great photo of Andy sitting in his high chair at my kitchen table, with a bowl of custard tipped over his head. When the kids were young I’d work on that table – that was my office, where spreadsheets were laid out. The first games of tennis Jamie and Andy played were on that table. They put cereal boxes across the middle as a net.
My mum fed me and my two younger brothers a teaspoon of Virol every day. It was a yeast extract and obviously for health, but it was disgusting. Back then I was very keen on sherbet Dip Dabs and liquorice, and I really loved those chocolate discs with hundreds and thousands on – Jazzies.
Mum brought me up on home cooking – mainly. She’d been at domestic science college and, if she hadn’t become a homemaker, for my dad, might have become a domestic-science teacher. This was in the days before ready meals. And I very clearly remember Mum making her huge pots of vegetable soup. And scotch eggs. And sardines on buttered toast. Think of all the fish oil.
Mum makes incredible shortbread. When I did Strictly Come Dancing I took some in and everybody said, “Bring that every time.” During Andy’s 2013 Wimbledon final she brought down a tin of shortbread, but lemon iced doughnuts is pretty much all I can remember of that one. At one of the boys’ matches a week earlier a drone camera had caught me stuffing cake into my mouth.
I remember Mother cheating sometimes. She’d pour tins of Heinz spaghetti bolognese into a dish and put grated cheese on top, passing it off as all her own work. But she’s never had a microwave. Never, ever. And at 83 she still makes homemade soup every day. I think a lot of her soup thing came from my father who’d only eat veg if she made them into a soup. Otherwise he’d have her cottage pie or roast chicken and potatoes but that’s it. A think a lot of Mother’s shall-we-say culinary expertise was thwarted by Dad’s simplicity.
I originally coached my own sons and became a Scotland tennis coach. I found it helped learning the swing, the hard hit, if you added the odd sweet to the wet newspaper in a bag they had to hit. If there’s a reward available, I barely need to teach. The game teaches the motion.
At a junior tournament in the Azores, they put meatballs and spaghetti in front of us and we all ate them, they were delicious. Afterwards one of the German coaches came up and explained that they were donkey balls.
Andy has a fitness trainer and a physio, and they tend to carry his stuff – juices and mixtures and powders and gels in squeezy tubes that are easily absorbed. Of his wife, his grandmother (my mother) and me, he’d say I’m the worst cook.
When Andy went off to Academia Sanchez-Casal in Barcelona he was 14 and I imagine living off chicken, pasta and tomato sauce for lunch and dinner most days. But the academy was literally behind the airport and there was a low-cost airline from Glasgow and Edinburgh and I could fly over and shop for biscuits and other comfort food for him. A lot of snack bars. And tangerines, not apples, because Andy didn’t like apples, and not bananas because they go off too easily. Jamie, meanwhile, had trained at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in France, where they don’t cook their meat all the way through, but with sauces.
If I go to pick up my niece at lunchtime, the vans outside school are all fast food. That wouldn’t be the end of the world if everyone was doing lots of sport. I also do a lot of work in schools and I’m very aware of how many more children are “overweight” and “uncoordinated”. I’ve seen quite a few TV cooks in action recently and they make it look so easy. So I’ve decided to go on a four-day cookery course in Italy making pasta and sauces.
What you have to remember about professional tennis is that you don’t know when your match is beginning – and therefore when to eat – unless you’re in the first game of the tournament.
My favourite things
Food
I don’t eat sushi but it’s my kids’ favourite thing, so I’ve had to find dishes on Japanese menus that I like. I enjoy the black cod or chicken teriyaki.
Drink
Out with friends, a Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc with soda or sparkling water, and ice.
Signature dish
Pasta or stir-fry, where you chuck in prawn, coconut, pineapple, strawberries, chicken, pine nuts, loads of salady things.
Knowing the Score by Judy Murray is out now in paperback (Vintage, £8.99). To order a copy for £7.64, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846
