Paid for by Coca Cola and Mc.Donald's (because of the obvious healthy sporting associations of gorging sugar, salt and fat in industrial quantities, and because we've got no money) and with no other food or beverages allowed on site it promises to be a strange spectacle.
Already, our charming English delight in amateurish cock-ups has been well to the fore.
We've been running a satirical TV programme called 2012 alongside the preparations for several years now and it has been remarkably prescient, with life imitating art quite beautifully.
In the first episode the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square went wrong and the very next week so did the real one.
Their fictional transport manager managed to bring London to a halt and inevitably this week the trains have not been running and traffic is gridlocked.
On the TV show, the coach taking them to the site got hopelessly lost, and this appears to have become the common theme for athletes arriving at Heathrow (all week, they've been driving round and round London, unable to find the Olympic Village - athletes regularly Tweeting that they've been stuck on a coach for four hours with no toilet). The organisers hired hundreds of coach drivers from all across the country, many of whom had never seen London before and could not read a sat-nav device. It's been humiliating yet hilarious.
And capping it all, on Wednesday those same organisers proudly boasted in the press that they had done their research properly and that there'd be no embarrassing faux-pas like at the World Championships where the Khazakstan medal winner was saluted by the spoof Khazak national anthem from Borat …
… and yesterday all of that research paid off when the North Korean women's football team walked off the field in protest at having the South Korean flag displayed next to their players.
Ah, we do bumbling incompetence so well. We're sure to win the gold medal in that event.
Anyhoo … traffic chaos, broken cable cars, no trains, international pickpocket gangs, rip-off hotel prices, only junk food to eat and the choice between swelteringly hot and humid or pissing down with rain notwithstanding, here come the Olympics and there's nothing any of us can do to hold back the deluge of jingoistic tosh spewing forth from press and TV.
I'm quite looking forward to the opening ceremony, though I'll be watching from a safe distance (120 miles away). Those things are a guaranteed gold mine of unintentional mirth.
What I'm really looking forward to, however, is watching the world's top athletes really going for it. I'll turn off the inane commentary and put on some good music and watch amazing athletes do amazing things (once they've crawled off their coaches and queued for the loo).
Let the games begin.
6 comments:
Morning ranty son, are you going to ring a bell at 10 past 8 this morning?
I think you have just about covered everything, and I will watch the opening ceremony.
I hope that after the games the many facilities that have been made will be well used, apart from those shocking huts they intend to put our fighting forces into!
No, I didn't ring a bell (and by the silence coming in through my window neither did anyone else around here, including the two churches I can see).
I've not covered everything by a long, long way, but writing a list would have been very boring.
After the games will come the recriminations, blamethrowing and excuses but I can wait; I want to enjoy the sports. The rest can go fish.
I woke up to the bells B (via my clock radio) and didn't really understand what was going on. As someone said recently, "just because you've won a Turner prize, Martin Creed, doesn't mean you can stop trying"...
Enjoy the ceremony. P
It's Beethoven's 9th on the Proms this evening so I'll stick Radio 3 on LOUD and turn the sound off on the telly so I can giggle at the buffoonery of the opening ceremony without the annoyingly inane commentary.
Loved your four minute, 21 mile Rutland video on FB! Hoorah for fast weemen!
LOL - I've been listening to the Beethoven and have just switched on R3 so that I can listen to no 9 this evening.
Thanks for watching the vid. It's funny, someone else said that it made her think of the jazz tune "fast lady" which is a Carry On style carry-on, featuring Leslie Phillips, Dick Emery etc. Starring a 1927 Bentley. have you seen it?
No, but now I want to!
Th Beethoven has been boffo (especially the fifth) and it's good to know we're both blasting the neighbours with the Ninth. Enjoy!
Post a Comment