Olympic Travail

Thankfully the Olympics only come once every 4 years and only once a lifetime to any one venue. The British nation is sighing a fairly huge sigh of relief that the games have passed off without major cock ups and we just have to do the same with the Paralympics and we can get on with being the miserable, down trodden plebs we usually are. 

The most amazing part of the whole thing has been the glimpse of what life could be like. The Olympics produced REAL heroes. People who have truly worked and scraped just to get to there. It has thrown the antics of TOWIE/BB/premiership footballers etc into sharp relief. It is a cruel glimpse as the the media's (and the populations at large) voracious appetite for copy will search high and low for anything that will sell magazines. But just for a moment there we had real and proper role models. Sporting heroes are  not the only kind of course, there are many unpaid and/or uncelebrated volunteers that carry on about their business because they believe in what they do. What the Olympians have done is to show us how it feels to have aspirations truly worth having. 

So in the spirit of trying to instill or remind my kids about worthy aspirations I decided that, at the last minute, we must partake of the Olympic experience. There was a lottery for Olympic tickets some months ago but the conditions were such that I figured my chances of winning anything I wanted were poor. It seemed as though I was right as of my friends and family no one got a thing! 

However I chose 2 days during the Games that we could get to London and then we started tracking the Olympic ticket website to see what we could get. On the Thursday we were offered women's Greco-Roman  wrestling. However, whilst I  quite fancied watching Amazonian eastern European women grappling in public it did not entice my kin. For Friday we were able to book seats to the women's hockey bronze medal match.  My Mum's broadband chose that moment to fall over for 24 hours and as I had no ID available (I was on a staycation after all) we could not collect  the tickets in person. There was still the Hyde Park free venue and in the interests of Olympic fervour we set out on Friday 9th August to London.

The plan was simple. Train to Victoria, walk to Hyde Park, check the atmos, maybe do a bit of sight seeing if unimpressed. 

Train journey went to plan, strolled past Buckingham palace (kids had never seen it) and then  the Bomber Command memorial as we passed along Piccadilly in search of a fast food venue. It was lunchtime after all!

The free Hyde park venue must have been big because we seemed to skirt it's borders for an age. There was airport style security at the entrance and the sandals I was wearing had started to rub badly and then my daughter went a bit vasovagal with all the heat. She managed to stay conscious for the half hour it took to get into the park but soon had to find shade to lie down in. Recovery was remarkable, on her back with me lifting her legs restored her blood pressure and she started to feel better. 

We had 4 screens to choose from. The first one we came across was a bantam weight semi-final with a Brit in it. There was a suppressed cheer in the audience when he eventually ran out a points winner but it was a little disappointing. To be fair it was a multinational audience in the park. Onwards we strolled and found the start of the BMX finals. However before the medal races we were sidetracked by the Women's hockey and sat through that as there was Team GB  after a bronze. The first half was a bit quiet. My kids don't understand hockey and my knowledge is a little shaky. Explaining the corners was a little tricky. Then Team GB scored! The crowd gave an almost derisory cheer. Team GB scored again! The cheer was a little more upbeat. New Zealand scored next. Deafening silence. Funny I thought there would be heap loads of New Zealander's about. When team GB scored their 3rd and final goal the crowd at last reached what you might of been able to describe as an excited state, but only if you knew them all to be on tranquilizers. The final whistle went and Team GB had earned a well deserved bronze medal. The only difference in crowd reaction was that they waved the Union Jack/BT flags that BT were handing out to all and sundry. 

It turned out we missed the BMX medal races but it also transpired that Team GB failed to medal hence why we heard no crowd reaction. 

My kids had seen enough of Hyde Park at this stage so I decided it was sight seeing time. Oxford Street here we come. I don't know how my daughter did it but she was a different person when face with a mile of shops. In fact the pair of them were energised and it was slow progress as I dragged them from shop to shop. We missed out all the department stores. I waned to go into Selfridges but that was of no interest to my progeny and we continued on our slow progress. 

Upon reaching Regent Street I diverted  them down to Piccadilly Circus and then Trafalgar Square. Down the very sweaty Tube and short ride to Victoria via the Northern line and Circle line. A real educational treat for my kids as the northern line was particularly uncomfortable that day. Not good for claustrophobia sufferers. 

We had time for refreshment at Victoria before a last minute dash to catch our train. Which was full and we were left standing all the way to Gatwick. 

The sky treated us to a spectacular sunset and exhausted, and a little sun burnt we arrived at base camp and a lift back to my Mum's house by my Mum. I must never let her drive me again. We hit every single drain cover between her house and the railway and must have been close to mounting the kerb on several occasions.