Post Olympics

So, that’s it, then. Two weeks of watching the planet’s athletes doing what they do best are now at anend, and now Great Britain can go back to doing what it does best, namely, returning to a foul mood and not being quite so positive. It must have been quite a strain for the nation’s cynics over the last fortnight, like a middle aged man holding his stomach in when a pretty girl walks past.
Having little or no interest in sport, I ended up seeing little to none of the games. In fact, most of what I did see was essentially the opening and closing ceremonies, both at big screens – one in Brighton, on the beach, and the other, tonight, at the BBC Garden at the Edinburgh Fringe. There were, of course, these big screens in town centres all over the country, allowing people everywhere to soak up that atmosphere of fun, comradeship and support for the nation’s Olympians. Well, except in Worthing, where last week someone nicked the laptop and cable that were needed to transmit the footage from the BBC. Maybe in Worthing they assumed that basic thievery was an Olympic sport, and they were going for Bronze. And by ‘going for Bronze’, I do of course mean simply pinching it from a railway line.
However, the atmosphere at those screens was wonderful. A lot was said about how easy it was to get caught up in a sport that you had no real passion – or, indeed, fundamental knowledge – of, and that’s even more true within a crowd of amenable people on a sunny day getting swept up in all the high drama of, say, dressage.

We’ve learnt a lot from these games. We’ve learned that we’re in dire need of stronger role models than the cast of TOWIE. We’ve learned that despite what we’re continually being told, that actually most people are pretty fond of Great Britain. We’ve learned that an alarming amount of people want to sleep with Tom Daly, regardless of what they thought their sexuality was. And, I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned that every time from now one I use a taxi, I want it to be like the ones the Spice Girls use.