Regular visitors to potlatch (TM) will notice that the Olympics is something of a preoccupation around these parts. So as you can imagine, I'm as excited as anyone about the Greatest Sporting Show On Earth (TM) that is about to land on my doorstep this Friday. When I say "anyone", of course I mean the commuter who is stuck with their face in someone else's sweaty armpit, because London's pre-distressed transport network has been reduced to complete lock-down, thanks to the 2,000 journalists, 250 Australians and 650,000 business executives who are descending on London for the next fortnight. When I say "anyone", I do not, of course, mean the Olympic Committee, who are hanging out in Buckingham Palace, as part of their bribe (TM) for not giving the games to Paris.
As the unofficial scribe of the Olympics, I present to you the Official Potlatch (TM) Curmudgeon's Guide To the 2012 Olympics, compiled from the last 12 months of rants and raves:
Emotional Blackmail by Olympics, July 27th, 2011
The post-speculative Olympics, November 11th 2011
Olympics as political bottleneck, February 29th, 2012
How to restore pricelessness, April 15th, 2012
Against the cashless Olympics, June 1st, 2012
Essential anti-Olympic reading, June 23rd, 2012
And with that, I'm off to hide in a cave for the next 18 days or so. My dad offered me a ticket to the croquet or something, but faced with a dilemma between ethnographic curiosity and moral consistency I opted for the latter. So I'm staying well away from Stratford. Sadly, as demonstrated by the fact that the BBC 10 O'clock News (sprinking its coverage with updates on the Syrian uprising and the demise of European capitalism) now comes live from the Olympic park, the whole charade seems unlikely to stay away from me.
Escaped to Vancouver, who hosted the last (albeit winter) one. According to locals here we'll all stop complaining and be hi-5-ing tourists in the street once it starts. I was hi-5-ed by a security guy in Heathrow as I left. Not sure what that means.
Posted by: alice | July 24, 2012 at 03:45 PM
Right son, you're nicked...
Posted by: Dick Pountain | July 26, 2012 at 09:23 AM
And now it has started, you can see that there is no grid-lock (in fact they are not even running the Olympic lanes full-time because the traffic is so light!) and the world didn't fall apart. I think London 2012 has been organised brilliantly - and thank goodness France didn't get it (smug would go nowhere near to covering it!)....we are even beating them in the medals table - despite their President being so sniffy when he visited!
I am so glad we have the Olympics and I think we have behaved with typical restraint and good manners. I seriously think that other people should have held their own counsel until the games started - then they wouldn't be looking so daft now ;)
Hmmmm - wonder if I should have waited until the Games ended before I posted this...or I could end up looking daft too!
Posted by: Ruthie | August 04, 2012 at 11:55 AM
Is this comment a spoof? "Thank goodness France didn't get it" sounds like someone trying to do a parody of Enid Blyton (who, in fine Olympian spirit, was also a eugenicist, incidentally).
Posted by: Will Davies | August 04, 2012 at 02:17 PM