The French are Complaining
According to The Times, the French are complaining that the official Olympic brochure is not available in French.
But if you do put it into French, do you use French French, which I can read or Canadian French, which I can’t and a lot of French people from France have been known to laugh at in the same way we treat American English.
In my view there might be a more serious problem on the various Olympic sites. All sports with the exception of football, cricket and one or two others are performed with respect to metric units. Even rugby talks about 10 and 22 metre lines!
So do we put up the signs inside the Olympic park with yards or metres. As most of the competitors and spectators, think a yard is somewhere to keep your rubbish, we should use metres.
But I bet we don’t!
The only place I know in the UK, with metric signposts, is Liverpool University’s campus.
There is an e-petition on metrication here.
For those who are against this on account of it’s not the British thing to use metric units. I have never used Imperial units in business and don’t ever use them to measure anything. My eldest child will be 43 this year and he didn’t even learn about Imperial units at school.
So why do we keep them?
We Need More Canning Town Stations
Canning Town station is a major interchange in East London and will be important in getting spectators to the Olympics.
The Jubilee line, two DLR lines and lots of bus routes meet there.
We need more interchanges like this in London and over the whole country for that matter. As I have said before, Hackney Downs and Hackney Central stations should be combined, with a bus station below.
Charlotte Rampling and Elizabeth Frink
There was a piece in the Times yesterday about Charlotte Rampling and how at 66, she is still finding good parts. The article mentions her father, Godfrey, as an Army officer, but he was more than that. He was a superb athlete, winning gold in the 1936 Olympics and died three years ago at 100.
Charlotte was born in one of the villages surrounding Haverhill in Suffolk. As was Elisabeth Frink, one of our finest sculptors.
There must be something in the water.
The Mystery Knitter Of Saltburn
This story turned up during the week, where a mystery knitter made a 50 metre Olympic-themed scarf and tied it to Saltburn pier.
How Various Nationalities Could Get to the Olympics
London has always been a multi-national and multi-cultural city, so there has always been large groups of various nationalities in various parts of the city. Where I live is just a stone’s throw away from where my French Huguenot ancestors lived and go a little bit further south and east and my Jewish ancestors could be found at the start of the 19th century. Even now, certain Caribbean groups have settled in places like Brixton,New Malden has been populated by Koreans and there’s an area of Camden with lots of Georgian restaurants. London is a complete jigsaw of nationalities.
So you can get a few mildly humorous rules about how the various nationalities might get to the Olympic Park.
The Koreans in New Malden, as do many, have an easy trip. They just take a train into Waterloo and then take the Jubilee line round to Stratford.
Remember the London Underground rule to estimate journey times; 2 minutes per station and add 5 minutes for an interchange.
The French should walk to the Park from West Ham or Hackney Wick stations, on top of the Greenway, as this walk and cycle path, sits on a major part of London’s sewerage system, which was built by a man called Joseph Bazalette, whose grandfather was French.
A few of the Russians will be very rich, so will be in VIP limos, but if they and their fellow countrymen do go by public transport, they’ll take the Olympic Javelin Shuttle from St. Pancras station. But one day they might like to go by the Central line and go a few stops past Stratford to look at Gants Hill station, which is to a design for Russia by Charles Holden. There’s some pictures I took of the station here.
The Orange Train for the Dutch at the London Olympics
London’s new Overground system is four lines, with a fifth to be added in October, later this year.
The Dutch will feel at home on these trains, as the colour scheme of the trains and stations is predominately orange and the line is shown in orange on the tube map.
The major line, the North London line, also travels across North London from the Olympic site at Stratford and connects to buses and trains to get to the Heineken House at Alexandra Palace. If you go further west you get to Hampstead Heath and Kew Gardens, two of the best places in London to get over a hangover.
I suspect that getting to Alexandra Palace during the Olympics may be difficult, as the two train routes from Kings Cross St. Pancras station, where the Olympic Javelin Shuttles arrive, the suburban rail to Alexandra Palace station and the Piccadilly line to Wood Green station, are crowded most of the time, even without the Games. If you can get to Alexandra Palace station, it’s a much shorter walk up the hill to the Palace.
So a better alternative might be to take the North London line from Stratford to Highbury and Islington and then take the suburban rail from there to Alexandra Palace station. It will certainly avoid the inevitable crush and wait at Kings Cross.
A Colour-Coordinated Commuter
The picture shows the London Overground’s distinctive orange colour that gets everywhere. Perhaps, the colour design team was led by a Blackpool supporter or someone from The Netherlands.
The London Overground Orange
Opposite me on my trip to the deep South, was a very normal looking commuter, who had an orange-framed Brompton bicycle and a phone and an MP3 player in orange cases.
I felt to take the photograph would have been too much orange.
By the way, one of the Overground lines reaches from the Olympic site at Stratford to convenient buses to Alexandra Palace, where the Dutch House is to be setup . So is this orange by design or coincidence?
The Dutch should feel happy at Ally Pally, as it has an ice rink. They could get vertigo though, as it is one of the highest points of London and the views are spectacular.
Olympic Tickets
What has happened here is that the organisers got their sums wrong.
They based the number of tickets on what had been sold for previous games in places like Athens, Sydney and Barcelona.
But they forgot some things in their calculations. How about these?
London has lots of residents, who have families who live abroad. So what better time to have a family reunion?
Lots of those who work in the City are highly paid EU citizens. So what better time to buy a lot of tickets so all your friends and family from Ireland, Germany or Spain can see the Olympics?
London has lots of attractions, so many ordinary people in nearby EU countries, who probably won’t get another chance to see an Olympics, are making the London their big holiday this year. Rio will be a bit expensive next time round. The Irish certainly will be coming in droves, as we all know they love a party.
So if anything, the shortage of Olympic tickets is more of a success thing than anything else. Although you could blame London’s unique place in the world and being a member of the EU as important too.
The French Prove They Shouldn’t Have Had the Olympics
The French were peeved that we got the Olympics for 2012, especially as they said they had all the stadia ready.
But when they built the Stade de France, they forgot one important thing; undersoil heating. In fact because of the design of the roof, they may have actually made things worse in cold weather. This is from Wikipedia.
The tinted glass in the center reduces the contrast and distributes natural light. It filters out red and infrared radiation, however, it allows blue and green lights, due to their necessity involving the health of the turf.
So perhaps their design actually made matters worse by stopping red and infrared radiation.
I suspect there will be small arguments going on all over Paris tonight. How many Irishmen for instance have come over for a long weekend with their wifes to give them a Valentine’s Day treat on Tuesday? And how many French are wanting to get back the South-West, where most of their rugby is placed?
It’s just been said on BBC Radio 5, that the reason the Stade de France has no undersoil heating , is that it was built on an old rubbish dump and methane rises out of the soil.
Everything Comes To Him Who Waits
In all this fuss about the new England manager, nothing has been heard from Stuart Pearce. Although, Harry Redknapp has almost ruled himself out. As have a few other candidates like Alan Pardew.
So does this leave the field clear for Stuart Pearce to be caretaker manager for the match against the Netherlands. We might find out in a few minutes. I suspect we will hear he’s got the job, as who else knows their way around the FA offices, boardroom and politics? If they pick somone for one match, even if he was of the status of say Arsene Wenger, he would be unable to do anything in a couple of weeks.
So could the reason, Pearce has been quiet, is that he knows more than anybody else and doesn’t want to overturn the pile of unstable bricks? Remember as assistant coach to the England team, he will have detailed dossiers on all the England players and because of his job as Under-21 coach, he’ll know the players coming through.
The pundits all say we won’t win Euro-2012 or the football at the Olympics, so if he performs well in the Netherlands game, his coaching team could be given the responsibility for Euro-2012 in addition to the Olympics. In fact, as the Olympics tournament is not many games, handling two teams might not be much more difficult, especially as he’ll probably have Beckham in the Olympic team, to help and act as a conduit for the media.
The permutations are endless.
They have just announced Stuart Pearce will be manager for the match against the Netherlands.
Do I think they’ll take it away from him for Euro-2012? No! Unless we get beaten seriously by The Netherlands. After all he’d be some elephant to have in the room next door.
The Anonymous Widower 