2012 London Olympics. Opening Day

2012 London Olympics. Opening Day

Friday 27^th July 2012

Evening people.

My bed my bed my kingdom for a bed.

Hands up, its already going wrong. I sit here on the evening of Saturday 28th very quickly losing a fight with a cold virus that has been passed onto me by... it’s not fair to mention KATIE any names, that KATIE wouldn't be KATIE right would it... What a rotter...

Anna said that she wanted to watch the Olympic Clock in Trafalgar Square go to "0.00.00" (we had been there EXACTLY two years ago when they had a, "two years to go" party) so it seemed to make perfect sense. We didn't get into Liverpool Street St until late afternoon and the place was empty. London was empty. We should have the Olympics every day. Where was all the traffic? Where was the chaos that all the doom merchants had predicted?

We saw loads of people walking around with their passes proudly on show, "LOOK AT ME... LOOK AT ME", you know the sort, but when you looked they were just press passes and not very important press people at that. All the competitors were walking around in their suits, uniforms, tracksuits and they were really cool about being spotted and were happy to stop and talk with their fellow countrymen.

We saw the Royal Dingy, "Gloriana" in St Katherine’s Dock, nice bit of wood that. The Danes have their own little piece of Denmark in there too and what a great vibe they have created and what is it with those bright pink plastic pigs? Very strange. While I'm on the subject, Czech Rep are in the Islington Hilton, Austria are at Tower Hill (you couldn't miss it if you tried) and the Danes are in SKD.

Then came the count down to 0.00.00 and we missed the Red Arrows because Anna wanted to go into a shop. We came out of the shop to find loads of red, white and blue smoke falling through the sky and I made a mental note that my daughter was up for adoption in the morning...

Once the clock had hit 0.00.00 the party began. The whole vibe of London had been one of the happiness of NYE with the calmness of 6am on a Sunday morning, very happy and chilled.

A group of Americans decided to climb onto the base of Nelson's Column and started to chant, "USA...USA...USA...", then someone started to chant, "You guys suck... You guys suck...", a few hundred people all chanting the same thing put them firmly in their place and it was simply stunning, the Americans simply sulked off to the corner of the base...

Then Brazil and Portugal took the party vibe to whole new level. So many people, so many flags, of all nations, Brazil TV joined in and Broadcast LIVE from the middle of the base, everyone was just busy getting on with getting on, except the Americans who were still sulking in their own little corner of misery. LOVE IT!!!


We got home somewhere very close to way past midnight.

I do remember having a king sized bed with a NASA memory foam mattress... which obviously doesn't work because I couldn't remember where it was...

Noggin xx