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..

Is the Government writing Comedy Scripts?

Other Half and I like a bit of comedy. Life can be gloomy enough without watching on TV/listening on the radio to dark dramas, especially the type where someone ends up tied up with blood streaming from various bits of the body whilst others are screaming and running about with guns. Yes give us a good comedy show, the more silly, satirical or anarchic the better.

So last night promised to be a good night, the Now Show [satirical] on Radio 4 followed by later on ITV Benidorm [silly] and on BBC2 Twenty Twelve [satirical and slightly anarchic?]

Of course I laughed at the Now Show, always do - as 'Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis dissect the week's news with comical precision' [as the website puts it] But last night it was obvious that the script had almost written itself. Or rather the Government had written a lot of the best lines. From the budget induced 'pasty crisis' to the more serious petrol 'shortages' situation.

Benidorm was reassuringly silly and Twenty Twelve had us laughing until we cried. But the worrying point about the latter programme - which is a spoof documentary about the 'organisers' [and that in itself is a loose term] of the forthcoming Olympics] was how easily statements to the press and others by both these 'Officials' and 'Government advisers' sounded impressive but actually said nothing. Have you listened to real news bulletins and interviews lately and thought the same thing?

Which brings me back to the fiasco which has been the result of Government statements this week. We have a women in hospital with 40% burns through decanting petrol in her kitchen which then exploded. Whether she did this as a result of David Cameron & Francis Maude's advice is obviously unknown. And although the poor woman was obviously unwise to have done what she did, she is paying for it in the most dreadful way. The Government were more than unwise, they deliberately unleashed a wave of panic buying to demonise the union and the tanker drivers. And what Francis Maude suggested was - if not actually illegal [when we lived in Germany this would have been illegal btw] it was really foolhardy to put it lightly.

And as for the pasty and sausage roll farrago, no leading politician looks good on that one. I don't care whether any of them eats cooked pies or not - but I do care that once again the poorer sections of society are being disproportionately affected whilst the better off sections have probably never been into a Greggs..... David Cameron's recollections of when he last had a pasty and advertising which make it was were as cringe making as watching Ed Milliband and Ed Balls stopping off at Greggs for a quick snack.

Then came an important story in the Daily Telegraph which suggested that David Cameron's pasty story may in fact be untrue. What other secrets are we about to discover? Well the same article reveals:

Nick Clegg has also eaten a pasty “in the last few months at Paddington station”, according to his spokesman. Sources close to Baroness Warsi said she “loves pasties” and often eats them when on trips round the country.

This is enough to make me strike pasties from my shopping lists, although I do really like them and Other Half particularly enjoys the veggie ones we buy in Glastonbury. But as we are not politicians I don't suppose you want to know that.

Quick where's the TV listings guide magazine. Are there any comedy programmes on tonight?



The photograph is from the Twenty Twelve website