Olympics 1: GB Footie

After enjoying a thoroughly bizarre, perhaps a little too colloquial, but all in all wonderful opening ceremony around my flat with some mates and bevvies, it was time for our first live event - GB football at Wembley.

I am a firm believer that men's football should not be in the Olympics in its current format (U23s plus 3 older players), if at all. Bar none, an Olympic event should have the best players in the world showing what, at its peak, the human body can achieve. By making the event limited in scope, it makes it sub standard and takes the edge off the pinnacle that the Olympics is meant to represent. Saying that, I was very excited to get my hands on some tickets for the first GB team since 1960.

The first game, Senegal vs Uruguay, was a shock win for the African team who showed plenty of spirit going down early to 10 men, but also hacked like Sunday league players. As Wembley slowly filled to capacity a positive and festival atmosphere grew as people cheered on anyone and everyone.

By the time the UAE vs GB game started (I keep on starting to type England, just like the odd section of the crowd who started chanting EN-GER-LAND EN-GER-LAND, before promptly stopping and moving to something more appropriate and less monotone), the whole place was buzzing. It was really noticeable how many more families and less loutish blokes there were then the normal Wembley game. A patriotic, yet unconfrontational air ruled, with Union Jacks everywhere being were waved and shaken at anything half decent that emanated from the team.

As it happened the team didn't do half bad, with the older Welsh players (Giggs and the impressive Bellamy) giving some structure and confidence to the young mostly English remainder of the team. A good goal early in the first half led to huge cheers and a general mood of satisfaction. As the game stretched on, the crowd's interest shifted from average football into decent Mexican waves and the odd comedy chant. This was though rudely interrupted by the UAE scoring quite a decent goal on the break 60 mins into the match. I mean how dare they. Had they not heard this was our party?

Suddenly everyone was chewing their nails and GB did their very best to throw it all away for the next 10 minutes, the UAE striker missing a sitter. Fortunately it all came good with a couple of quick goals from the GB subs, each greeted with huge cheers and the odd jig. The satisfied haze filtered back through the crowd and, at least in my section, it descended into a few thousand people trying to fit GB into Hey Jude (for future experience, it fits best into the chorus by replacing "Hey" with "G and "Jude" with "B").

All in all a gentle, pleasant introduction to the London 2012 Olympics. The game was not a big one, Football is barely a real Olympic sport, but no one really cared, as it was a great excuse to allow a whole lot of people to grab their bit of the Olympic experience and, for 90 per cent of the crowd, cheer on Team GB.

Stuck on Wembley way inching towards the tube, I glimpsed back and beheld thousands of happy punters pouring out from the great stadium, Olympic logo finery to each and every side and, of course, that magnificent arch blazoned across the night sky. Quite a spectacle.

LONDON TWENTY TWELVE

After years of waiting it is finally here. In less then 24 hours the Olympic Games will be in London, my home town.

Tonight, I am but a little boy seething with excitement and anticipation. I spend half my normal life dreaming of jumping on a plane and exploring far flung lands, but right here and now there is unequivocally no place I would rather be than exactly where I am. Where I work, where I live, where I play. London.

It is a British trait to dwell on the negatives. As a nation we feel comfortable stooped in grey and far too many Londoners I have spoken to concentrate on the few detrimental, or potentially detrimental, aspects of the Games. Traffic, security, cost, nightmare journeys to work, rubbish ticketing system....etc. Some people go on and on. I just say sod them. The costs are sunk,  you can't spend your life worrying about whether some nut may or not try and blow himself up, if you really wanted a ticket you could I have got one (there are still some on sale now!), and, being British, we can put up with the odd queue.

The eye of the world is on this city. None less than humanity's greatest celebration of itself is back in London. The last time it was here Stalin ruled Russia, no one had a TV and my father was in the womb. The next time it comes I will almost certainly have fallen off this mortal coil. Let's just enjoy this wonderful one off opportunity!

Over the next two weeks, I will share a few experiences from the odd mish-mash of tickets I have managed to scrape together. From beach volleyball to taekwando, via hockey and athletics, a spot of heavyweight greco-roman wrestling, the odd bit of archery and couple of other events thrown in for good measure, I hope to pick up enough interesting experiences to savour and, just perhaps, make this blog worth reading.

A Dip in the Aegean

I’ve not been below the waves for most of a year. Sitting on the edge of a rib, bounding across the surface of the Aegean between sky and sea blue, I am all anticipation. Back into the routine of kitting up, checks, all OK signalled with thumb and finger and down we go.

Water rushes into the ears, with the accompanying dulled sense signalling entry into another realm. Just like that the mind switches and relaxes, enveloped in weightlessness. Down, equalisation, down, equalisation.

The Mediterranean no longer has the animalian wonders of other seas, over fished-for so long, but you just never know. Twinned with the calm other-worldliness of diving, it is this sense of the unknown, adventure and surprise that has solidified my addiction.
Eighteen meters down and across to a vertical wall. We are circumnavigating a small island in the middle of the Cyclades. The mind concentrates on the small flora and fauna, investigating anemones, fish, sponges and little sea-worms filtering the sea with dangling arms. Pleasant surprises. Two protruding antennae give away a lobster poking out of one whole. An angry looking moray eel guarding another. Every so often my mind trips out of the moment and contemplates how odd it is to be in this alien environment. Then something of interest draws me back and it all feels so natural.

A large cleft in the rock to the right and a three meter wide tunnel opens up. In we go. Up it leads, torches showing up gold fish. Careful breathing to control buoyancy, I branch off to explore a side tunnel. A squeeze, the walls close-in as I progress. Some tiny shrimp distract me from a tinge of claustrophobia. Always easier to go forward then backwards in all this gear, caution eventually halts me. I back-up, but was sorely tempted by the unexplored cavern ahead. Next time.

Back up the main shaft, gliding over submerged stalacmites, ten meters on and the surroundings open up into a large enclosed space. We are in the island. A safety stop searching nooks and crannies and I surface into an airspace at the highest echelon of this submerged cavern. I lie on my back, stare at the stalactites and listen to the echoing trickles and splashes.

Back under and across to the other side of the cave, the scene is stolen by a large entrance back out to the open sea. A vast porthole into another world, bursting in bright blue and transversed by a shoal of fish. Out and down deeper. A large abandoned net sprawls from wall to the sea-floor, slowly being colonised by small things of the deep. A small revenge against the savage destruction of this sea by man.

Most of the larger fish long-gone, there is little reason to search out in the blue in this sea, so I concentrate back on the intricasies of the sea wall. A dozen different types of small fish and then my gift goodbye. A scorpion fish no longer then my index finger lies motionless on an outcrop of rock. Only with my torch can I detect its vivid red colour and spines.

Timeless, yet gone in a moment. Slow ascent to the silhouette of a boat and the shimmering sparkle of the sun.

Bible Belt over Breakfast

Every country has its stereotypes and the US has its fair share. While many of these are more positive, one that bemuses and, for me at least, down right scares outsiders is the fundamentalist right wing nut. It is widely publicised that such people are concentrated in the conservative core of the country, the Bible Belt, and I was under the impression that the coasts (or at least the north-east and south-west coasts) were comparably free of this phenomena. Was this just wishful thinking?

My first two weeks travelling down the coast of California had seemed to substantiate this, where the people we met were generally charming, extremely friendly and normal in the good sense. OK, we saw the odd Church of Christ the Scientist in just about every town we passed through (don't look them up - scary, worth your ridicule, but not your time), but that was about it.

That run came to an abrupt end on our final morning in San Diego. Sitting at the breakfast table of our lovely B&B overlooking the harbour, we were introduced to and started conversing with a mother and her daughter who I guessed to be about 12. They lived in a coastal town an hour to the north, seemed extra friendly and, apart from pausing our conversation for an intense private grace complete with whispers and sternly clenched hands, relatively normal. How nice that the mother was taking her daughter down to the big city for tea at some fancy hotel. Good, honest hard working Americans. Salt of the earth... or as I was shortly to realise, frightening crazies.

The mother explained that this was an extra-curricular activity as part of home schooling. The ears prick up. "Oh, you home school your kid, how interesting. Not common in Europe for some reason... Please tell more." Try to grin in a non-judgemental way. Apparently the kids love it,  she can make sure they do not associate with the wrong people, be taught unwelcome things or generally be left to the wind of a state school system you can not trust. "Oh dear, what is the problem with the school system?" You never know, maybe she has valid reasons for barring her children from a normal childhood. Of course. You can't trust the schools to give an education which accords with their faith and, blow me down, schools dare to teach evolution as a theory of our existence. I can't believe she is saying this.  Yes, schools brainwash children to believe in unsubstantiated, un-Christian things like science and evolution and pollute kids minds with progressive ideas and sex education. She IS actually saying this, try not to snigger, it is NOT FUNNY. She can stop this secular tyranny by taking first hand care of her daughters education and concentrating on essential skills which can help her to be a good mother and wife, such as Bible class and (yes, she actually said it) napkin folding. No shit, the kid is actually folding a napkin as we converse. They moved to California because it has such understanding home schooling laws. No need for the parents to have any pesky things like qualifications or certification. In fact no need even for the kids to be tested.  What in the fuck are wrong with these people? Need to question, want to go for the proverbial jugular, but can't as I don't want to hurt the girls feelings. "How interesting, but aren't you a little worried about the kids not socialising?" No, no that is all fine. While she has sensibly prohibited her daughter from going to girl scouts on the basis that it it is not sufficiently Christian, her kids will grow up with great social skills as they get to meet people at Church group... 

Poor, poor kid. I pitied the poor thing as she kept on folding her napkins in uniform patterns. Only two paths seem open to her. One is to embrace the brainwashing and follow her mother's designated path to servitude (the mother refuted the neceessity of school testing, seeing them as a distraction from her daughter fulfilling her God-given purpose of serving her future man as a housewife and brain-washing the next generation as a mother). The other is to break free of the BS, but at what cost. With no proper education, no high school certificate and a family that might well disown her she would be left high and dry. Real cruelty. How could a thinking, caring mother do such a thing to her daughter? But that is the point, somewhere in this lady's brain a switch has been turned off. Ironic as it is, after millenia of human improvement built on our ability to question our surroundings, this lady has devolved to a state of non-questioning fundamentalism. Tarnishing your own life with such ignorance is one thing, destroying your offspring's is another.

Perhaps most sickening of all, this activity is effectively sponsored by the laws of the great state of California.

Rant over.