Monday 30th July 2012

And so, after seven years, three weeks, two days of waiting (that is an estimate, I’m not really sure about that in all honesty) the Olympic Games finally got underway in Stratford, East London on Friday night. As I explained in my previous post, the games had already began two days previously when the football began. But, the official opening ceremony was to be on Friday night, and as director, Danny Boyle wanted it to take place in darkness.



Which is why it didn’t begin until nine at night, and end at something like a quarter to one on Saturday morning. Lets get the boring stuff out of the way first; at about the midway point the parade of competitors began with Greece leading the way, and then the next 202 nations, in alphabetical order and bringing up the rear was Britain as hosts. Once you have seen one team marching behind a flag waving that the crowd and with cutaway shots showing that country’s political leader waving and smiling back, you have seen most of them. After an hour of the parade we seemed to be still on the Bs. And we fought with our own heavy eyelids and the banal commentary from the BBC who in a lighthearted manner that country’s main interest, appalling human rights records and abuses by the governments on its people. It was oddly compelling.

But before then was the opening ceremony itself, as seen through the mind of Danny Boyle; there was fields, Glastonbury Tor, a cricket match, the industrial revolution, war, the NHS, children’s literature the Queen and James Bond parachuted into the stadium (again), Arctic Monkeys and Paul McCartney. It was brilliant, left of centre, left of politics (if you’re a conservative MP or Mit Romney) and took my breath away on many occasions. At the end, David Beckham drove a speedboat up the Thames and passed the flame onto Sir Steve Redgrave and he ran into the stadium, and in a surprise, passed that onto seven young athletes who ran round to light the 204 copper urinals which rose up to form a cauldron of flame.

Before the ceremony, we headed to Ringwould to the Five Bells which had reopened earlier this year. We had passed it a few times and thought it would be nice to see what it was like, and so Friday was that night. We both had fresh pan fried lamb with mash and fresh vegetables. It was OK, if unspectacular, but the owners have done a fine job in restoring the building into a modern gastropub.



And Paul McCartney sand Hey Jude and got just all the bronze medal winner to sing this time, or some other silly thing. It was all too much and we went to bed.

Phew.

Next morning the sport had begun, or the other sports other than the football began, and China won the first gold medal of the games. I went out to visit a country and steam fair at Coldred. Coldred is just a few miles the other side of Dover, and so took me ten minutes to get there and find a place to park in the muddy field. I paid my £7 to enter and so in I went.



I had been to the Chilli Farm before, and in truth it was little different to the one I attended three years ago. Vintage cars, tractors, motorbikes, commercial vehicles and steam traction engines all vied for space and attention. I took shots, walked round the site twice and decided to leave. I had my shots and I would have just ended up photographing people and maybe getting into trouble. I tried to shoot from the hip at a bloke wearing just shots but covered from head to toe in VM tattoos; and topped by a Mohican haircut. A nice look, but who am I to judge? I did visit a stall run by a bird of prey recue centre and paid to have a kestrel sit on my hand so I could photograph it. A wonderful thing to do, and something I would pay a fiver to do again. We looked at each other, me at the bird’s beauty and it wondering if I was tasty.



I headed to Preston to the butcher and then back home. Jools was teaching beading to a couple of ladies, so I sat on the sofa with a huge cup of tea and the remains of the cookies left and began to watch the road racing. As if three weeks of it wasn’t enough. It seemed it was going to be simple for team GB to get its first medal, but things did not go to plan, and we came away medal-less.



That night I cooked peppered steak for dinner, which was really very good indeed and we headed to bed early, needing to catch up on what we missed the previous night.



Sunday, we awoke before half six, and outside the sun shone from a cloudless sky. The forecast was for clouds by ten and rain by midday. We grabbed a coffee and headed out. We took our favourite route along our street, up the track over the fields and then down the valley and heading over the downs to the cliffs at Dover Patrol. It was wonderful, and there were very few people about. We stopped at a couple of place to look for butterflies and to admire the views of the wild flowers of crops stretching to the horizon.



At the cliffs we paused to sit and admire the view, have a biscuit as a snack before retracing our steps back home as the increasing breeze brought thicker and thicker clouds to cover the sky. Within ten minutes of us walking in the door the rain began to fall, not much, but enough to have got damp had we still have been out. I cooked bacon butties and brewed a fresh pot of coffee for breakfast, and then I sat down to look at the 649 shots I had taken that morning. Really.



Now, walking back I noticed my right foot had begun to ache, and once back inside with my shoe off it really began to sting. Taking off my sock we find a lump about half the size of a boiled egg on top of my foot, which shows I wasn’t imagining it. So that put any thought of any more exercise that day out of the question, and so in the afternoon we went to visit Tony and Nan as I had seen neither of them since Tony went on holiday some six weeks ago.



And that was your Olympic Weekend, although to call it that would invite court proceedings for infringement of copyright, such is the power of the IOC; the term summer, London and or 2012 in any combination could use you open to prosecution.