Rules For Athletes At The Games
There used to be a whole set of rules for visitors to London, mainly made up by Gerard Hoffnung. The only one I can remember is the one, that said that all brothels had a blue light outside of them.
Some of his rules and those who have parodied him are very appropriate for the Olympics.
- Have you tried the famous echo in the reading room of the British Museum?
- Winston Churchill’s favourite branch of Starbucks was the one in New Oxford Street, because he considered it to have the cleanest toilets
- All buses are actually like taxis, and the driver is legally obliged to take you wherever you demand. All you have to do is climb on and declare where you wish to be taken in a loud voice.
- It is important to shake hands with everyone in your train compartment.
If you type Gerard Hofnung into Google, lots of more inappropriate suggestions will be found.
I did find one for hurdlers and high jumpers, that it was OK to jump the barriers at Underground stations. On the other hand, after what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes, I wouldn’t try it.
Verified By Visa Revisited
I have moaned about this crap before.
I have been fighting it for a couple of hours and in the end I managed to buy two extra Olympic tickets. Can the reason that so many people find buying these tickets difficult is you must use a Visa card and you can’t fight your way through this awful system?
I have just written to my credit card company, saying that after the Olympics, they can put their Visa card in a place where it will hurt.
Today I was adding a new password all the time and then when I tried it the next it was rejected, so I had to start again. Surely entering a new password every time you use the card is the most insecure way to use a credit card on line.
It might well be that the US version of this system works because everybody uses the last four digits of their Social Security Number. In the UK no-one knows theirs and anyway it ends in a letter. So perhaps the problem is that the system has not been properly rewritten for the UK.
Anyway it’s crap!
The Athletes Have Arrived
The Olympic Village is now open and athletes and officials are now arriving and moving into their homes for the duration of the Olympics.
I went twice through Stratford today.
The first time, I took the train DLR from Stratford International to the Emirates Air-Line and the only Olympic person I saw was a lost G4S security guard trying to get to Star Lane station. She was Swedish in her mid-twenties or so. So much for jobs for local people!
In the evening, I walked through the Eastfield shopping centre and there were a few athletes about, buying a few things they’d forgotten.
As I took the Central line back to Bank for a bus home, I started to think what might have been.
C and I liked our sport and especially the equestrian disciplines. We had also planned that we would be retiring to London and whether we would have done so by now, I do not know. But I suspect not, as politicians had made the stud virtually unsaleable.
But I’m here now. And alone!
So in some ways, I’m rather sad, but then there are athletes ready to give that lift that I need, just like Chris Brasher, Chris Chataway, Derek Ibbotson and Bruce Tulloh have in the 1950s. I always had a soft spot for Tulloh, who wasn’t the biggest and often ran barefoot. I’ll rerember seeing his victory in Belgrade that I watched on black and white television as long as I live.
On A Clear Day You Can See For Miles
I took these pictures on the Emirates Air-Line on Sunday.
It just shows how far you can see if the weather is good. The Mittal Orbit on the Olympic Park stands out. It is quite easy to pick out Wembley Stadium towards the North West
Comparing Two Chariots of Fire
I finally got to see the film this lunchtime at Cineworld in West India Quay.
So how do the two interpretations of the same story compare?
Obviously, in the film there is more action and of course period scenes done with all the care of a master film-maker.
But the play is a very good interpretation in its own right, with a track running through the audience. The only other show, where I saw a similar device was Siegfried and Roy in las Vegas. But their track was for tigers not runners. I incidentally had seat J8 in the stalls, which was right by the action. there are also seats on the back of the stage and inside the track at the front of the stalls.
What surprised me was that the words were virtually identical between the film and the play, although the play had extra scenes inserted to compensate for the lack of filmed sequences.
I enjoyed both and would recommend seeing both in a short space of time, as I have done.
Two Chariots of Fire
I’m off in a minute or so to see the new stage play of Chariots of Fire.
Then hopefully, it’ll be to the cinema to see the newly-re-released film.
What a way to tee-up the Olympics! Sadly alone!
I did run out of time as the play was longer than I thought. So it was either go hungry and rush half-way across London or come home and eat and see the film tomorrow or later in the week.
I chose the latter, especially as that allowed me to have a soaking in my dreadful bath.
The M4 Is Open Again
So what?
After all this is supposed to be a Green Games, so shouldn’t athletes and official be using trains to get to Stratford. The original plans for the Heathrow Express called for the trains to go to St. Pancras as well as Paddington. So what happened to that? Here‘s a press release from Railtrack.
If the Heathrow Express to St. Pancras, had connected to ThamesLink, in say a simple cross platform interchange, that would have been the quick way to get between London’s two biggest airports.
Olympic Security in Perspective
It has been reported, that two British climbers and five are missing after an avalanche in France.
We are rightly worried about security for the Olympic Games, but I think we are very much overly so.
Most of the people-related problems in the Olympics, will be drunks falling under Tube trains and serious health problems like heart attacks. As a regular user of London’s transport network, I know my places, where problems are likely to occur, but I won’t follow the government and most of those listening to radio phone-ins and scare-monger.
As I write this there is a Colonel on the radio, saying that we wouldn’t be able to provide the extra security, once we’ve reduced the size of the Armed Forces. I’ve heard his arguments many times before from left-wing union leaders, when a factory is being closed.
The real security failure has been the non-fulfilment of the contract by G4S to provide the security, they said they would provide.
The largest mole, I’ve ever seen, has just scurried down my road in the direction of the Olympic site. I assume, he’s part of the moles’ Mountain Brigade.
Talking up Defiencies
They’ve just had a very one-sided phone-in on BBC Radio 5, with virtually an hour of the dismal Jimmies and Jennies complaining about all the inadequacies.
We’ve just had a volunteer complaining, that they are not being given car parking on the Olympic Park. It sounds to me, that they should have been turned down as a volunteer.
Let’s face it, if you don’t like the conditions, don’t volunteer.
We should be celebrating what we got right.
My field is project management and we should be celebrating the fact that all of the venues and transport links have been constructed on time and generally on budget.
Remember the Olympic Park is built in a marsh and with all the bad weather we’ve been having lately, that has not only caused construction problems, but made the design of the park difficult. Luckily, the main site of the Games is by the River Lea and Joseph Bazalette‘s massive Northern Outfall Sewer, so hopefully we’ll cope, with water and sewage.
I’ve watched the plans unfold and East London has improved beyond all expectations.
When we won the bid the London Overground from New Cross to Dalston and from Stratford to Richmond only partly existed as a set of travelling urinals. now it is a modern railway with new trains, signalling and completely renewed track. The East London Line deserves five stars in its own right, as it was built through Brunel’s Thames Tunnel of 1840 and under the Kingsland Road, without breaking anything.
As the icing, London has now got its magnificent cable-car, which will be the fun legacy of the games.
And now the phone-in is talking about the failure of the O2 mobile phone network. My Nokia 6310i works well on O2 at the moment.
What Happened When The Torch Relay Went Into Windsor Castle To Meet The Queen
It rained of course. And heavily too. this was taken from the BBC’s text commentary.
Gina is then taken to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. After curtseying she says: “It’s English weather isn’t it. You can’t do anything about it.”
To which the Queen, dressed wisely in a camel overcoat, responds: “No nothing.” She then breaks into a wide smile and later enquires of the torch: “What keeps it going?”
The Duke of Edinburgh then seemed to test the weight of the torch before asking Gina, “Are you going to take it home?”
So it seems the Queen may be fed up with the weather too!
Aren’t we all?
The Anonymous Widower 