First and reverse hard to get

[airhead]

Just after getting home from work and when I pulled up at home and tried to reverse onto the driveway I found it very difficult to get into reverse. I managed to in the end and found it was also hard to get into first. Everything is as normal in second to fifth gears and it slots in nicely. I recently cleaned and lubricated the whole mechanism and it was working very well up until this point. I had a preliminary look at the linkage but don't really know where to look for the problem. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. The shift is moving over far enough and the spring is depressing as it should but when it's over to the left it won't easily move up or down into first or reverse. What should I be looking for here?