Sweet Nothings

Friday 10th - Athletics (Olympic Stadium) At last came my chance to have a wander around the Olympic Park, and a balmy Friday evening had surely created the ideal atmosphere for it. The Park feels more authentically Olympian than visiting other venues elsewhere, and it felt great to immerse myself in a place I'd been reading about and seeing from afar for years. It's easy for the Park to radiate warmth and vitality when it's teeming with people, of course. The real test will come once the Paralympics are over, and all the talk of Legacy will become real. Having been to both Barcelona's and Munich's parks in recent years, they give off a sense of occasion as memorials but both felt somewhat barren and sparse. World's largest McDonalds~! Still, I doubt this was on anybody's mind when they were inside the stadium, which was packed as it was for every session. Minor quibbles such as long queues and incompetent staffing at the food stalls couldn'

How 'bout these Olympics then? Despite all the prognostications of organisational disasters and transport armageddon, it appears that everything is going terribly smoothly - almost as if the media's sensationalist pre-Games focusing on the negatives was not entirely helpful or relevant. Imagine that. Even G4S's textbook demonstration of the ultimate consequences of unfettered privatisation was saved by the wasteful old public sector in the form of Our Brave Boys (and Girls) (TM), thereby providing the Daily Mail with a properly perplexing paradox. Empty Seats-Gate is the one thing to have really riled a lot of people, but even that has taken a backseat now that the medals have started rolling in for Team GB. For a hardcore sports fan it's a strange situation to have what feels like the whole country as enthused for a couple of weeks as you are for the rest of the year. Naturally our loved ones will return to being pissed off once we're back to watching the C