What I learned from the Olympic Games

• I loved that in a country where the ruling political party seems intent on dismantling our NHS and their members seem to be loosing more and more grip on what it’s like to live in this country without a trust fund, Danny Boyle could still put on an opening ceremony that could stick two fingers up at them in front of billions of viewers (now that wouldn’t have happened in China!)
• I love that the games do inspire a generation but not just in sport (although the Games have been excellent in showcasing to Girl and Boy Lacer sports that they didn’t even know existed) but in life in general; that with hard work, passion, a level head and maybe a bit of luck on the day, you can succeed and that’s not necessarily coming first either, just making it round the track sometimes is a success and if you don’t make it round the track (or the equivalent) you learn from what went wrong and you accept defeat gracefully and make plans to come back.
• I liked in particular some of the athlete interviews (although I felt a little sorry for some of the breathless athletes getting pounced on so soon after their events); for example the interview with Jessica Ennis just after her sixth event in the Heptathalon, when gold looked an almost dead cert and the interviewer asks her how she felt about that and she goes (I’m paraphrasing badly here), “I’m not even thinking about that, I’m focusing on the 800m and then I can think about that”, how’s that for a lesson in mindfulness and living in the moment?
• Or when Bolt is interviewed after his 100m win and he says (again paraphrasing badly) that his coach had told him not to worry about his starts and to concentrate on what he’s good at and that’s finishing, how’s that for a lesson in playing to your strengths?
• Or how about when Murray came back from recent defeat at Wimbledon to this time, and against the same player win, how’s that for a lesson in perseverance?
• And finally I loved how (despite what all the whingers still said, despite being drowned out by a more vocal majority) this country came together and we did it, we held a fantastic games and we should be very proud and none of the “oh the transport system won’t hold up” blah blah blah, actually happened. (And it was such a great advert for this country to, the scenery during the road events / sailing looked terrific, if you could tear your eyes away from the action that is).

And you know what? I also learned that I really like watching sport on TV and I will definitely do my best to make sure I keep following certain sports more often, although that isn’t always made easy as most of the time (despite the BBC’s excellent coverage for the Olympics), it’s just football, football, football, with maybe a bit of cricket and rugby thrown in, which to be honest are still sports that leave me a bit cold (actually, having spent some time living in Wales I do like watching a bit of rugby, but yeugh my god, cricket *shudder*). But it’s the 21st century and now thanks to the Olympics (and to a certain extent my real life job), I know follow four more athletes on Twitter than I was following before (i.e. it’s gone from total number of athletes followed 0 to 4) and I guess I can probably find ways to carry on following athletics and diving* online, if that’s the only way to do it.

*Ahem

Great British Bird

I was going to stitch this for the Jubilee but then my wrist op happened, so I didn’t do it but with Team GB doing so well in the Olympics, what better excuse than to stitch it now?  The pattern is by Bumpkin Bears.

Olympics!

It’s not every day you can say that you’ve seen the Olympics, let alone in your own city . . .

We went to see the morning athletics; heats for women’s hurdles, men’s discus, women’s shot put, men’s 800m and women’s 1500m, to be honest considering the recent Olympic excitement, particularly for Team GB, this morning’s output wasn’t particularly exciting and to be honest *whispers* watching athletics on TV versus watching it in the cheap seats where they’re little mini stick figures, well . . . But you can’t beat the atmosphere, particularly when anyone wearing the Team GB kit even stepped into the stadium. There was something weirdly timeless about it.

After the athletics we went up the Orbit, a giant sculpture where you get the lift up and then walk the 400 or so steps down, which was quite fun (and there’s some great views and really cool curved mirrors at the top). We then had lunch in the biggest McDonalds ever (or something) and then had an explore around the rest of what turned out to be a surprisingly gigantic park. I was really impressed with everything about the park, most of the architecture was fantastic (and the temporary stuff could be forgiven in looking a little less appealing), the planting with its sea of flowers was amazing (and reasonably mature, they must of started work on that a while ago) and I loved the random art work dotted round the place. Even got to see the Gloriana again! Oh and all the volunteers were incredibly cheerful and enthusiastic, I think my kids must have high fived half of them! So a lovely day out to remember, although if I were to see the Olympics again (and I might you know, next time it comes to Western Europe, I think I’ve caught the bug), I think I would probably invest in slightly more expensive seats . . .

Oh and the transport was fine

BT London Live

Now for the extremely corporate side of the Olympics; I took the kids to BT London Live in Hyde Park today. It’s there for a good while (till 12 August), so if you’re desperate to queue for a long time to see a fairly well constructed advert for Cadburys and then eat some extremely over priced food, you still can (and it’s free). Actually not being completely sour puss, I did like some of the opportunities to try some different sports (who knew Girl Lacer was, for someone who had never picked up a volleyball in her life, actually not that bad at doing one of those serve things they do) and the kids did so like the chocolate thing.

(Plus the multiple big screens showing the sport were good and if we’d been prepared to stay later we would have got to see The Levellers – ooooooh)

Olympic cycling in Richmond Park

Regular readers of this blog would kind of guess that I live close to Richmond Park, so when I heard that the Olympic cycling was passing through, of course I had to go, despite last time I saw a road cycle race, as a teenager on exchange to France, being bored to tears. Waiting for the race this time was a lot more fun, very relaxing sitting on the grass and with a long enough route, not too crowded. Even the police motorcyclists streaming past at regular intervals seemed to be enjoying themselves (the one below was doing high fives with the crowd).

And then there was the cyclists, in two main groups, they whizzed past in almost a blink of an eye.

Team GB were in the second group and they got such a cheer but the few riders that were lagging behind the two groups got even louder cheers.

After seeing the riders past I rushed home (which really wasn’t far away), hoping to catch the final sprint at the finish on TV and guess what? They beat me to it! By the time I switched the TV on the race had just finished! So it’s quicker for them to cycle into Central London from Richmond Park than it is for me to walk home!

PS I of course stayed up to watch the Opening Ceremony last night and I absolutely loved it, Danny Boyle is a genius and I loved in particular his support for the NHS. I know other countries may not have particularly got that bit but trust me, this was about Britain and although we may occasionally moan about our NHS (trust me I could say a thing or two about how long it takes to remove wisdom teeth right now) but it is a service that is very dear to all our hearts because all we have to do is see other countries that don’t have a free health care system and see how difficult it is for the self employed or low incomed and we love and appreciate our NHS even more (plus the people who work for the NHS are complete stars). And at a time when the NHS is under such attack by the incompetent ideologically motivated ******* we have the misfortune to have in power at the moment, to have someone say how much we appreciate the NHS, in such an extremely high profile way, was fantastic. I also loved the bit about children’s literature and Mr. Bean and oh the Queen, a Bond Girl! Absolutely fantastic. And oh the cauldron!  Stunningly beautiful, I really hope they display the cauldron somewhere like the V&A (or maybe still on site) once the Olympics are over. And oh the choice of the next generation to light the cauldron, just perfect.

A Mascot-y trip round London

We went into town today to meet my dad, we had originally thought to head to the Tower of London but we were torn because a new exhibit had just opened in Tate Modern and we had still yet to see the newly opened Tanks at the Tate as well. So we met up at the Tower of London anyway first, if anything to see the Olympic rings on Tower Bridge (which are pretty wow).

And where we got to spy on an outside broadcast of USA Today (ooh American reporters are a little more glam than ones on the Beeb). We walked past as they were also filming some crowd shots, Girl Lacer is very impressed that she may just possibly be on American TV and that very possibly an old (American) teacher of hers might see her.

We also got to see where the kids’ ancestor by marriage (Thomas More) got brought into the Tower of London (Traitor’s Gate) to have his head chopped off, which Girl Lacer was extremely impressed by but then we decided (after lunch) to head to Tate Modern instead of going into the Tower. We decided to head there by boat (even though it’s within an extremely walkable distance) and to be honest by the time we’d bought the ticket and then waited for the boat we could have walked there a lot quicker and a lot more easily, but it was fun.

Tate Modern was cool, after an initial hmmmmm about the new Turbine Hall installation, a performance / interactive piece by Tino Sehgal, I really liked it.

It may look like a bunch of people standing around but actually most (difficult to tell apart the performers from the visitors) are performance artists who stand round and tell you stories. One of them tried it on my dad, my dad ran a mile. For a while I thought that was it and it took some explaining to the kids, who although are normally massive Turbine Hall fans, were a bit bemused by this one. But then the light flickered out and at first we thought their lights had just failed, they came on again and we thought nothing of it and then they started fading in and out and then something happened which was rather magical and well, you’ll just have to see it (don’t want to ruin the surprise) but the kids went from bemused to impressed (well, I think at least Girl Lacer was).

We also went to see the new display space The Tanks, which were fantastic. Basically The Tanks are where they used to store the oil for the turbine and they have now converted them into a space for performance related art (dance, film etc) and it’s perfect. The all enclosing concrete, with the lack of natural ligt is womb like and it allows you to be really enveloped into the piece. We saw some experimental ballet rehearsals which were a bit hmmmm but then we saw some short films and they were fantastic, not so much the films themselves but how they were displayed, in darkened rooms with some excellent sound systems. I particularly liked the two larger rooms (linked by a glass wall in part), they displayed several screens with different films and little areas of soft carpet and weird things to sit on and odd things propped up against the walls, I loved it, the kids loved it.

But they particularly loved all the mascots we bumped into.

The Olympic Rings at Richmond Park

Me and Girl Lacer went to find the Olympic rings in Richmond Park today (warning there’s going to be a whole slew of over excited Olympic posts from me this summer). I had spotted the photo of the rings on Facebook and as we live so close, I just had to go.

It was an adventure in itself finding the rings, going just by the Facebook photo, I recognised Penn Ponds, so headed there first to orientate ourselves. Then there was lots of squinting at the photo on my phone and going “well there’s the small pond and there’s the Royal Ballet School, so that must mean the rings are over there,” but we spotted lots of great wildlife on the way, the park really is blooming at the moment.

When we found the rings, understandably from ground level you don’t get the greatest of views but it’s worth having a stroll round them and then heading up to the nearby ridge of small hills, to get at least a slightly better idea of what they look like (middle photo was taken from the aforementioned hill) but really, you need to be on a plane going into Heathrow, to get a really fantastic view.

Once we had found the rings, that meant we had to make our way home again, via Kingston town centre as Girl Lacer wanted to spend some pocket money. So I’d looked at the map and thought that the gate at Kingston Hill (called Robin Hood Gate) would be the best place to exit the park and then we could get a bus down the hill and into town. Hmmmm, this is where my “oh look, I can see the exit from here” skills trip me up. You see Richmond Park is a fantastic mixture of woodland and open fields and when you’re in an open field bit, you can see quite a distance (which is an amazing feeling, it’s only when you see what you’re normally missing, i.e the ability to see more than just the building across the road, do you realise, or at least I realise, how restricted your line of sight is living in the city, Richmond Park is one of those places where you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself that you’re still in London). Anyway, so I was standing in a field, could just about see an exit in the far distance and I assumed it was Robin Hood gate . . . nope, I only realised it wasn’t when we finally, after a lot of walking, got to it. I actually, until just now when I looked at the map, assumed we’d gone through Roehampton Gate instead, but no looking at the map, we not only missed the right gate by one, we missed it by two gates, we had left through Sheen Gate instead and considering we had entered through Ham Gate, that meant we had just literally walked across the park (it’s a very big park). No wonder it was a long walk to get to the bus stop in Roehampton!

So, the moral of the story is, don’t trust me to know where I’m going in Richmond Park (it’s not the first time I’ve got lost there) BUT the rings are a definite must see, specially if you’re in a plane

Image sources

Richmond Park photos – me! (see my Flickr stream for bigger, brighter, better photos)

Map bastardised from Google.

PS Please do not use any of my photos without my permission, thank you kindly