The Olympics are now underway. I am meant to go with popular opinion (or what the Government spin machine makes us believe is popular opinion) and say how dazzled I was by the opening ceremony. I am afraid I cannot. Of course it was pleasing to see so many happy young faces and the choreography and special effects were very impressive. But in terms of historical accuracy there were enough omissions that Beta minus would seem a charitable score. And the vision of what is special about modern Britain made me think what a vacuous sort of place we live in. We may have a lot of I-Pods, ageing celebs and a multi cultural awareness but do we really stand for anything of lasting note today? Some of the content was genuinely cringe making and my instant reaction was to take a two mile sea journey from my Corfiot summer base and claim political asylum in Albania.
By the time the Athletes started parading I needed a certain degree of anaesthetic in the form of cheap wine. Sadly not excellent Chapel Down wine. When an all-black team appeared behind what looked like the Irish flag it took me a little while to realise that we were only at C ( the parade seemed to last an eternity thanks to the inclusion of about 80 new countries that I had never heard of before) and that it was in fact the team from Cote d’Ivoire. And yes I then realised that the green, white and orange are in reverse order. I could not work out why some countries dressed their athletes like tour guides while others seemed to have borrowed a line of shell suits from a £1 shop in Liverpool. When a German VIP started giving the straight arm salute to the team from the Fatherland I got really baffled. Who said that the Krauts did not have a sense of humour? What were the Czech team doing wearing multi-coloured wellington boots? Is that part of the national costume or a joke about the British weather? Was it the team from Lichtenstein or Luxembourg who turned up in jeans so that they could go hang out and blend in with the young people in a Romford night club afterwards? By L, it was all a bit of a blur.
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