How the Olympics can make a garden grow

The seeds:





















The plants in flower:
I love the internet. The way that from small seeds something bigger can grow. Well sort of. Yesterday in my blog here I put a picture of the latest badges that Other Half and I are wearing and then thought I would show it to all my facebook friends [the seeds]. This engendered a bit of a discussion of the Olympics in general and below is one of my replies [the plants shoot] I then thought a bit more about what I had written and decided to write a bit more on my facebook 'status' [the plants bud] In turn I thought I ought to let my Olympic dream/extended metaphor grow a little and become a blog [The plants in flower]

The plants bud:
'Having a bit of a discussion about the joys [or not] of the London 2012 Olympics and some of you may have seen my reply which unintentionally turned into a bit of a rant! So I am putting it up as my status and hoping that some of you will be able to change my mind and making me feel that it is 'all good' [to quote 'Twenty Twelve']

The plants shoot:
"I must sound a real curmudgeon and even non-sporty me enjoyed the cycling and a few other events in the past. I was thrilled when we were awarded the 2012 games back in 2005. However the misery [and I mean that] engendered by those like us who live near to the games locales by the road building schemes, dreadful cock-ups in planning road closures, the lack of availability of tickets, the 'suggestions' that even if the 'free' events like cycling are coming through your area you stay in and watch them on TV, the 'advice' to those travelling and working in London that they get up earlier and leave later as half the road lanes are to become 'Olympic Lanes' from Monday..... [Many of my neighbours already leave home at 6.30 am and arrive back more than 12 hours later] The money wasted by some local councils on Olympic flags at £300 a flutter per flag [allegedly] when 'they' are cutting back on welfare services to the disabled and the like [and if my local council wish to defend this please do]"

Now of course we have had the news break in the past couple of days about the sterling job that G4S security are doing - NOT. I don't know if any of you heard their 'Chief of Staff' [I am being ironical there btw] interviewed on 'Today', radio 4, this morning? The only pity was that he wasn't being grilled by John Humphries. Worth a 'listen again' imo.

This rant may become supersized [get the McDonalds reference, clever huh?] and become a blog. On the other hand I might just go for a calming down walk in the countryside in the rain.'

The Garden in Bloom:
Well, rain helps the plants grow. But also makes Elizannie a wet and unhappy lady. So I will end the metaphor with some of the good things about the games, hopefully. The corporate sponsors will probably have a lot of merchandise left after the closing ceremony which may mean reductions in prices and cheap Christmas present shopping for all of us [as long as we don't mind giving/receiving things with the awful logo plastered all over. I will just say that I am not proud] Those uncompleted road contracts, security contracts et al may mean huge penalty clause payments by contractors to local and county councils and governments so a reduction in our local and income taxes [sorry, you didn't just say there are no penalty clauses, did you?]

I really am not attacking the corporate sponsorships because without them the cost of the Olympic Games here in the UK in 2012 would have been impossible. Which would have been an awful shame*. So that's all good.


*Can't say this out loud as I have my tongue stuck firmly in my cheek.

Westward Ho or Travels with my Other Half*

Elizannie and Other Half have just returned from another set of travels in the West Country which took in a bit of magic, a sense of awe, a bit of humility and a lot of fun. Returning to the Olympic hysteria surrounding the London suburbs/Thames Estuary was a rude awakening.

A large part of our two weeks away was shared [by arrangement] with a Gateway Club holiday. I have written about this group before, and we have been lucky enough to share holidays with the group on several occasions, but I have desisted writing about the fun we all have from a fear of sounding patronising and using the club members as examples of how we should all 'count our blessings' and rambling on about how those allegedly less advantaged are plucky etc etc, which is how too many observers too often treat the subject.

So what do I write? The truth, perhaps? That we had a good week with friends: lots of laughs, a few tears, a few misunderstandings - all in all a 'normal' week's holiday. Except that there was a lot less complaining than on a 'normal' week's holiday - the generally rotten weather was taken for what it was and it didn't stop anyone from getting on with the fun [although the sight of Other Half after a trip across the moors on an Open Top bus in the pouring rain was worth a thousand words!] Club members dressing up for evening entertainments shamed me into getting out of my scruffy jeans and t-shirts and finding skirts and make-up! No political discussions for a week was quite a relief too, really.

As always, if we had expressed our massive admiration of all the volunteer helpers they would have brushed it aside as they consider they are just on holiday helping out friends and positively do not look for thanks. But a big thank you from us to all from that particular Gateway club for letting us join with them in their fun.

The second week of our travels took us to Cornwall and - for this summer - reasonably good weather. As a 'King Arthur anorak' I wanted to climb to the top of Tintagel Castle and achieved it although I was the last of our party [despite being the youngest by all of eleven months!] to achieve the top of the winding steps! Still it was an impressive view down, and a magical feeling pertaining to King Arthur and his court too.

A further exploration took us on to the village of Boscastle which was disastrously flooded in August 2004. Miraculously no lives were lost but the amount of damage caused and the way that the town has recovered are both awe inspiring. Please do follow the link and read about the way that nature can be savage and man can persevere to rebuild. Our party sat outside a cafe eating scones and looking way above our heads at a sign showing how high the flood waters reached that day - which we remembered well because we were sitting very many miles further along the same coast line, in the pouring rain, enjoying a [wet] bar-be-que, with no idea of the devastation happening further down the coast.

After all these rather thought provoking experiences, it was quite a change to return to the South East and all the developing Olympic shenanigans. When we watched the latest episode of Twenty Twelve, 'Catastrophisation' on the night prior to returning home, it was as usual hysterically funny. However within twenty four hours of our return and after listening to London based radio stations we realised that just maybe some of the fictional situations we had watched could be coming true. And oh, the complaining on the airwaves! So maybe the badges we are wearing should be shared around a bit...





*Once more I have 'lifted' and adapted my blog title from literary sources, this time two books:
Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley. This book was so successful that entrepreneurs in the 19thC saw 'an opportunity' and built an hotel and other developments of the same name near where the book begins [in Devon] and eventually the village proper - Westward Ho! -developed. The only village in the British Isles with an exclamation mark in its name... but I am not allowed to put an exclamation mark in the 'Labels for this post' on this page. Oh well..

Oh what a Circus, Oh what a show! Or what did the Olympics do for us?

Yes, I have mashed up two famous shows/films in this blog title. The first half is from the title song to the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita, the second half is a misquote from Monty Python's Life of Brian In case it is thought this blog is a show business review, read on Dear Reader...

I don't think that Elizannie would make a good spy. Taking the above photograph last night, in Kent Avenue, Dagenham and trying to be unobtrusive, didn't sit lightly on my shoulders. Firstly I am not that handy with a camera [well actually it was my 'phone, don't own a camera] and secondly I need a lot of time to 'frame' and get the 'subject' in the right place. And the fact that I was taking the picture out of a car window and the car was moving, albeit slowly, wasn't helping. And waiting until the two burly security men on the gate about 200 hundred yards away were looking the other way also wasn't helping. I developed a shake. It wasn't until I got home and enlarged the picture on my laptop that I realised the notice just showing on the left hand side of the picture says:

Warning: Surveillance cameras are operating in this car park.

If I had seen this at the time camera shake would have been even more interesting.....

So why have I taken a snap of this 'Big Top'? Well it is actually the rehearsal area for the opening and closing ceremonies of the forthcoming Olympics. OK, this has to be done somewhere and as you can all see, this appears to be a pretty deserted and unloved piece of ground. But I see the whole area as a metaphor for how much Britain - and its workforce - has changed in the past ten years or so.

Until just over ten years ago, since 1931, this site housed one of the major manufacturing areas of the Ford Motor Company in Britain. It was opened by the first Edsel Ford and at its peak of vehicle production it was producing 1200 cars a day and had a two shift pattern. It employed up to 30,000 people. I grew up near to this plant and at shift change time one couldn't cross the main roads for the employees flooding from the factory gates. Happy times.

One hundred years ago this ground was marsh land surrounding Dagenham Docks - looking out over the Thames. After WW1 reclamation work started and Ford bought the land and built their factory there. Lots of my family were employed there. The site was like a little industrial village - it had its own foundry (since closed and moved to Germany. Some workers in the Dagenham factory contracted asbestosis); a Power Station [which used to contribute to the National Grid]; a Medical Centre [which saved the NHS a lot of money in minor injury treatments. I was even treated there in my very short career with Ford]; an apprentice training building – 350 were started each year in the 1960s and at that time all were expected to be found a job at the end of their apprenticeship; a Stamping Die and Assembly tool room - in other words this plant was more or less self sufficient. The local shops looked after the workers well, f'r instance the local barbers could provide a 3/6p haircut while the bus you hopped off waited for traffic to move at shift change over in Chequers Lane - true story!! Another true story, to illustrate how cutting edge the plant and its engineering was over the years, is the fact that the first KUKA assembly robots in the UK automotive industry were used there.


But life moves on, the little shops that served the workers have closed and when Ford [like other large manufacturers] decided it had to 'rationalise' globally, it was its UK plants that were closed and employees who lost their jobd. The work from the UK was sent to Ford plants in different areas of the world where although labour costs are higher than in the UK they cannot close plants because labour laws in those countries make it impossible to get rid of employees in the way they can be dispensed with in the UK. Although ironically Ford still expects to sell its products here, failing to understand that the redundant workers are unable to find new jobs and cannot afford to buy new cars etc.

Meanwhile successive British governments, who have given regional grants to manufacturers here, like Ford, in the past, happily wave goodbye to such manufacturers. Last week we had the sickening sight of David Cameron and Nick Clegg in what was once a Ford owned Tractor Plant in Basildon, Essex burbling on about how it is manufacturing industry that is going to save our nation and relieve us of the deficit.

But how? We have so little manufacturing industry left - compared to, say, forty years ago. Worryingly, so much knowledge and experience has also been lost. Engineers are not valued in this country, in fact I signed a petition Make 'Engineer' a protected title just last month. [When we lived in Germany an Engineer was considered as one of the professions. Here it is looked down upon as 'dirty job' despite the number of qualifications required to fulfil the role and the amount of technical innovations that can bring revenue into the country] If you saw Dave & Nick on the news doing their double act last week you may have noticed a lack of enthusiasm in their audience of workers. Not far away, in the town, are many empty shops and factories where businesses have closed down due to the recession in the past few years. In fact just a couple of miles away stood the 'overflow' Ford factory for its Dagenham plant, built with the aid of a regional grant in the 1950s. That factory closed in 2009 with the loss of many jobs.

So from Marsh land to Industrial Giant to Olympic Rehearsal site. Where next? There was talk about a prison being built there but plans have changed. Some talk of a housing estate, although local services would be severely stretched one would think. Another factory to employ the many unemployed in the area, provide apprenticeships for the young in the area and fund growth in the area by sourcing satellite industries and financing small shops. Sounds good doesn't it? It happened in 1931. With a bit of Government encouragement it could happen again and in other such areas in the UK. If they really meant what they said last week.



The photograph was taken not far from the River Thames. Fire fighters and ARP wardens used to watch the aircraft from all nations flying up and down the Thames from the roof of the Ford Buildings here in WW2.