Scandal at mopping HQ...

I went in to work a couple of hours early today because all of the Great British players were scheduled to play during the afternoon session, so I figured that I could see them all if I got out of bed fast enough. Contrary to previous performances, I was actually successful in
the whole getting out of bed malarkey!

The seating that is allocated to 'technical officials' (yes, floor mopping is apparently 'technical', do not laugh) is shared with the players and coaches, so there was ginger-old-me rocking it up in spotty leggings (we can't really wear uniform off-duty), surrounded by various international tracksuits... I had a pass, though, so at least I looked slightly less gatecrasher and slightly more standardised!

Susan Egelstaff lost very closely (she played really, really well) and, shortly after the match, Team GB came up and sat in front of me. Meaning that, at one point, I had Peter Gade and GB in front of me, China and Indonesia behind, Spain next to me, Simon Archer to my left and Gail Emms in the commentary box at the top of the stand. At this point I was obviously loving life.

Raj lost as well in a three set match, which was gutting because he was so close to winning, and then Chris and Imo followed it with another GB loss. They didn't look totally at ease before the match and, when someone told them 'good luck', their response was something along the lines of them having to play for the crowd and not for themselves, so I suspect that the pressure of the home crowd may have got to them just a little bit too much. It's such a shame that they couldn't seem to get into the matches enough to follow up their success of the London World Championships here at the Olympics, but I guess that they are still young enough to potentially have another shot in Rio.

After the session ended, and after a fair few comments on how different I look out of uniform (i.e. out of a T-Shirt the same colour as my hair...), I did a quick-change into uniform in the luxury (I joke) of the athlete's toilets and made my way up for tea before heading to our lounge. Today was another freebies day upon checking in, and I now have 2 pin badges! Although the GB one remains my firm favourite (sorry, McDonalds).

Today I mopped for:

J.Jorgensen (Denmark). vs. D. Wong (Indonesia)
C. Xu & J. Ma (China) vs. HL. Chen & WH Cheng (Chinese Taipei)
I also mopped for another match but, due to the pandemonium going on around me, I have no idea what it was anymore (although I promise that I was paying full attention at the time)!


I went onto court for my first match and had sat for less than 11 points when thunderous (this is not an exaggeration) boos began to erupt from the audience. At this point I thought that it was one team's fans booing the opposition, but as it continued point, after point, after point, I realised that there was something else going on. Only to sneakily watch some of the play on that court (luckily it was in front of me, so I could do this without the awkward turn-around-in-chair, which normally ends up on TV), to discover that each pair in the ladies doubles were serving into the net and hitting shots that were about a metre out of the court into the net, just to ensure that the other team got the points. Put bluntly: both teams (China and Korea, just to name and shame) were trying to lose.

The tournament referee and coaches argue...

We came off court to find out that they were doing this to try to get into the better half of the draw. Unfortunately, despite the booing, China were successful in doing this and, somehow, the world number ones lost to something like 7 points. Totally realistic. Not...
And, surprise, surprise, China will now not meet China until the final...


We went on for our next match joking about what to do if it happened again (walking off court was very seriously considered), only to get on court and, towards the end of the match, to hear the same thing happening again, this time between the Indonesian and Korean women's doubles pairings who were on court behind us.

And the tournament referee joins the umpire and players on court

They reached about 4-4 before the tournament referee was called on to the court, the coaches and the players were all warned, they did the same again, the referee came on again
and then the players played properly up to 11, before messing around again. At this point the match that I had been on had finished and I was back in the NTO's lounge, where their 'match' was on TV. These players were literally just hitting clear after clear (presumably because it looked at least slightly as if they were playing) and then one of them would either pretend to misjudge a line (leaving the shuttle to fall in to give the other team the point), or they would drop shot the shuttle (very deliberately) into the net.  It was such a shame, because people had paid for tickets and were watching pairs in the top 10 in the world playing at a standard that your average person could recreate in a church hall. The referee came on again and gave both pairings black cards (i.e. disqualified them), only to withdraw the cards and make play continue. Obviously, the same thing happened again, and it continued to happen even after the referee broke through the arguing coaches and went and stood next to the court to force them to 'play'.

They were nice enough to smile for my camera
on their way out...

In the end, the Indonesians were bad enough to lose. They were (probably deservedly) booed off court, and refused to give press interviews, storming off into the back of house.
It was completely against the whole concept of the 'Olympic Spirit' and such a shame that they didn't just go out there and play properly, because the games would have been really good!
Sadly, if all four pairs are not disqualified, it will probably be one of them who wins. And, really, there is no way (despite it being so obvious) to prove that they weren't trying, so the chances of them being thrown out of the competition are probably very small.

The contrast of situations was horrific as well: Susan Egelstaff broke down into tears when she came and sat down after her match because she was so gutted to lose, and yet these eight players sadly went out there with seemingly no aim whatsoever to even put up a fight (or pretend to). Hopefully someone, somewhere has learnt a lesson so that this doesn't have to happen again. (Gail Emms, get on the case please).

I (luckily) don't have to pay to see these matches, but to anyone who had tickets to today's badminton and expected to see true Olympians, I apologise that you had to sit through all of that.

                                           Hiss, boo.



Olympic spot of the day: Anthony Clark doing the commentary for the spectator's headsets.

(Seb 'in my mum's class at school' Coe also payed us a visit today for the England matches. Luckily he missed all of the drama of this evening!)     

''You mop those courts''

I found myself!

I moved flat today and I'm now in Camden. This afternoon I spent several hours getting pretty lost while trying to find the Amy Winehouse house which, despite the epic detour I made, was actually only at the end of the road that I'm staying on...

I then got my mopping face on and took my first train journey in a long while that didn't involve London Waterloo.

Today I mopped for:

J. Chen (China) vs. P. Wahca (Poland)

T. Baun (Denmark) vs. K. Augustyn (Poland)

J. Ha & MJ. Kim (Kora) vs. Choo & Veeran (Australia)

During this evening's session we also got a fair few interesting shouts... My favourite of these was ''you mop those courts'', which was directed at me. I enjoyed ''get the teachers to fill the empty seats'' slightly less. And I am now going to have a massive rant, so apologies in advance.

Right... I know that it is getting a lot of news coverage, and obviously I can speak only for what I have seen (which is the evening sessions of the badminton) (disclaimer: I am speaking for myself here and not LOCOG), but there are not that many seats which aren't (at some point) occupied!

I am not denying that there are empty seats, because there are, HOWEVER, the half-of-a-stand at the Arena which is, from the start of the session, emptier than the rest, is allocated mainly for the players and officials. And they DO use that area, just at varying times. Last night, after Lee Chong Wei's match I went onto centre court and, from where I was sat, I was struggling to see a row with more than 6 people sat on it (9 if you include the army once they were brought in). But these empty seats were not ones which hadn't been sold: the people who had sat in them had left after the Malaysia match!

In other (minorly seat-related) news... the President of Finland and a Prince from Denmark paid us a visit tonight!

The happiest Games Maker

So... the new flat has Internet and I have just discovered this gem.

''I'm here til 2AM everybody... If you've got your ticket please keep smiling from ear to ear. I don't want to have to start singing''.

Danny Boyle, I believe that we still have a Closing Ceremony left...

A very warm Arena and lots of mopping action

We watched the cycling (yes, Team GB!)  again this morning and our (German) flag made its TV debut on the BBC this afternoon. This called for many excited Skype calls to Germany.


The distance between the female cyclists shocked me, as I had time to watch the leaders and the Peleton, go and get ready, and then there were still bikes going past when I left the flat for the station.
I arrived at Wembley to be given a Games Maker journal (see left along with a pin that Team GB gave me because they thought that I was doing a good job) (have no fear, though, the blog will still take priority!). Apparently, we now get incentives on certain days of our shifts, and we have a card to attach to the back of our ID to say when we've got them. Freebies!

Today two extra moppers had been recruited to our team because yesterday we'd had to run from match to match and didn't have a break in 5 hours, despite the heat. We did get more little breaks, but, somehow, however, I managed to get myself on to every single match that went to three ends, so I was on court for over an hour each time!

Because of the heat in the Arena (if you're going, I reiterate: it is boiling even if it's bad weather outside so don't wrap up at all unless you're on an extremely drastic mission to sweat off all of your body weight), there was obviously a lot of sweat action going on (we're talking splatter patterns of sweat which appear with each overhead shot) (glamorous, I know), so this equalled lots of mopping action, and I lost count of the number of times that we had to go on, especially in the men's matches.

I mopped for:

P. Abian (Spain) vs. P. Koukal (Czech Republic) (despite Raj's match going on simultaneously, this was a very good close fought match, and when Koukal lost he was a total sweetie and kissed the London 2012 logo on the floor)
K. R. Juhl & C Pedersen (Denmark) vs. LY. Poon & Ys. Tse (Hong Kong) (I here got my first mopping thank you, courtesy of Kamilla, who is one of my favourite players on the circuit at the moment, and who was absolutely lovely to me, despite leaving the line judge next to me minorly traumatised)
M. Boe & C. Mogensen (Denmark) vs. V. Ivanov & I. Sozonov (Russia) (this was far closer than everyone expected, and it was kind of weirdly reassuring to see how much the player's hands were shaking when they served!)

While I was mopping for my last match, Raj's match was on the court in front of me. And. it .was. so. loud! My friend sent me something the other day about someone trying to sue Justin Bieber for his concert wrecking their hearing, and I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that I couldn't hear a single word that my umpire said, and I actually came away from it with earache. But the atmosphere was fantastic and it was so good to have a Team GB win after Chris and Immy's nightmare-ish past two days.

I'm working again today, but I'm going to be at a different house for the next three nights, so I'm not sure whether I'll have Internet to get a blog up. I'll write it anyway and then batch post it when I get back to Internet if I don't have it.

Olympic spot of the day: my favourite player, ever, ever, ever, Gail Emms, in the commentary box, air-punching and dancing throughout Raj's third end (as far as I'm concerned, I could spot Usain Bolt in London Waterloo and it would not top this).

Olympic debut

The cycling race came past the flat twice today, so we sat outside on the window ledge to watch. It was the first time that I'd seen a cycling road race live (although I've had a pretty decent share of playing badminton in the space in the middle of the Manchester Veledrome track), and I couldn't believe how fast they went or how many of them there were!
The first time that they went past, it was hard to pick out individual countries (so hopefully they spotted our England/ Germany flags themselves), but by the second time, we'd watched a lot of the TV coverage, so had managed to work out just about who was in which group, and we managed to spot Mark Cavendish et al.

After the cycling I did a very rapid quick-change into uniform and sneakily budged a couple of the barriers on the road to manage to get to the train station... Where I then encountered the first of London Olympic Traffic with a 'sorry this train is full' announcement. Although I really didn't consider said train to be full enough when it stopped, so I got on it anyway.

I got to Wembley Park along with a lot of excited badminton-watching-people, and went inside the Arena to find many excited badminton-officiating-and-mopping-people. We ate tea together, and then lined up ready to go onto court (complete with our super-attractive too-big caps, although the lights were very bright, so we probably did need them).

I mopped for:
L. Tan (Belgium) vs. S. Jaquet (Switzerland)
XL. Wang & Y. Yu (China) vs. A. Bruce & M. Li (Canada) (queue cheers for 'Bruce Lee')
B. Leverdez (France) vs. E. Ekiring (Uganda)
M. Lahnsteiner (Austria) vs. R. Must (Estonia)
Y. Cai & HF Fu (China) vs. R. Smith & G. Wharfe (Australia)

There were 15 matches scheduled for the session, so we literally came off court, got water from our team leader and then were run to the final warm-up area to queue back up again to go into the tunnel and on court. (Obviously not before the seemingly compulsory team high-fives at the entrance to the tunnel...)

I have an ongoing joke with a couple of the line judges that I will either moonwalk back with the mop on one occasion or do the Usain Bolt arm-gesture (note to LOCOG: I will probably not do this, so you don't have to sack me yet), but on the match that that group of line judges were on with me for, I sat down to them tutting me for not doing it! At that point, the Jenny serious face (which is probably making its debut for the first time ever this week) totally failed and we all had to try very hard not to laugh...

Other than a couple of awkward coach standing where I need to mop type-situations, it was pretty much stress free and I loved every minute of it. The good old concentration-span is also being put through its paces, as I had to try very hard not to be too nosey into what the German-speaking coaches/ players were saying when they were on court (ironically, I think that I ended up on practically every single German-speaking match that went on)... There were a couple of people in the crowd who I knew as well and I did get a fair amount of 'I can see you on TV' texts, which I found highly amusing.

More than ready to do it all again tomorrow!

A tourist-y type of day and an Opening Ceremony

My day yesterday basically consisted of me being a completely unashamed Olympic tourist, just minus the massive suitcase which there seemed to be a lot of around. I got the train out to London Bridge, accidentally forgetting that the torch relay had taken place there... So ended up in a massive crowd of people who were waiting for the torch (which had actually been through already, but I let some policemen break the news to them instead).

I walked along the Thames for a bit, finding the Wenlock models on the way, and there seemed to be a lot more athletes than anywhere else I've been yet, so because I was without uniform, the camera very much came out and I now have a heck of a lot of pictures of the backs of a lot of tracksuits! So much picture-taking was such tiring work (or just an ok excuse), that I then had an afternoon nap in Jubilee Gardens before heading to Trafalgar Square. Not only is Trafalgar Square my favourite place in the country, but yesterday I think that it may well have been one of the busiest places in the country. The oh-so-British queue for the countdown clock had dissolved into a bit of a push and shove crowd situation, but I found a less push and shove-y type person to take a picture for me. There was a massive buzz in the Square and, when the clock neared the 5 hour mark, the whole square began to count down, which was so exciting, and made it very hard to motivate myself to move from Nelson's Column.


Eventually, though, I did move, and I did find Waterstones, which was the whole reason that I had even been in in the first place! And, when I arrived back at the flat, I found a GB cyclist outside the front door (and the camera was whacked out again)!

We BBQ-ed in time for the ceremony, which, despite us laughing about how British it was, was actually amazing and fantastically thought out. Also, to my delight, the guy from LOCOG HQ (who will remain unnamed) who I had met on the train the other day, and who had told me a lot about the ceremony and showed me a lot of pictures, actually hadn't told/ shown me everything, so I was pleasantly surprised that some of it was still a surprise!

Anyway... I am now off to go and climb out of a window, sit on a windowsill and watch some cyclists whizz past! If you watch the cycling on TV: look out for the window with an English and a German flag.

Also, if you're going to the badminton/ Wembley: the hall is absolutely boiling, so don't wrap up too much!

Team GB, broccoli and stopwatches.

Today's rehearsal was due to start a couple of hours after our shift began and we were told that we could come in later, but we found out yesterday that the GB team had 2 hours of training scheduled in the practise halls mid-afternoonish, so I went in early and a couple of us sat on the coaches chairs at the back of the courts to watch them. They had been in the main arena during the day, so their training seemed to consist mainly of sitting down and being physioed, but one of their coaches was wandering around and started to chat to us, and we wound up with free GB pins from him. Pretty good start to the day, really!

We then had a briefing and ran a full dress rehearsal of the first matches of the first day (again, with no players there, so volunteers stepped in and pretended). I also got to mop properly today: exciting times!

At the end of our rehearsal, they ran a ceremonies rehearsal, (silver medals to Joe and Johanna Bloggs from the FOP team, might I add!) however because medals and flowers can't be used until they are actually awarded to players, the team used stopwatches and broccoli instead. I think that I may struggle to ever see broccoli in the same way again. The flag hoisting team were there and they raised 3 GB flags (we can dream!), and we all had to 'rise for the national anthem'.

Despite the names that were read out for the ceremony being variations on Joe Bloggs, the Arena screen seemed to disagree, with Donna Kellogg performing particularly well in the singles (!) and with my favourite players ever, ever, EVER, Gail Emms and Nathan Roberston, winning the mixed. Which devastatingly never actually happened, but at least I have a picture which claims that they did...

Olympic spot of the day: Simon Archer in the Wembley canteen.

A dress rehearsal for a dress rehearsal. And a casual bit of Lee Chong Wei.

First things first, despite not getting my letter, I did find the entrance to Hogwarts today. Or at least the trolley in the wall at King's Cross.

Today was my first day in uniform and I have now realised that this means I probably need a better obscure train station knowledge... Luckily I am turning into a bit of a beast as far as the map of the underground in my 'pocket guide' goes, however I don't know any of it from memory, so my apologies to quite a lot of tourists who expected a quick answer, but I tried my best and I hope that you got there!

I arrived at King's Cross quite early, so sat around for a while, but was kept amused by the Great British weightlifting team , who were told off by a man for walking through the picture that he was trying to take of Platform 7!

I got to Wembley early-ish and managed to find a shop that sold flags for when the cycling comes past the flat at the weekend. I also found a newsagent's which sold cow's drink. I assume that this is otherwise known as milk?! I then got to the Arena, went through security, collected my meal card and, whilst searching for my Team Manager, managed to find Lee Chong Wei instead. 

All of the courts are set up now and each of the nations have an allotted training session to have the opportunity practise on them. Our team (which has possibly the best abbreviation: FOP) met up and had another tour of the Arena and the practise halls to orientate ourselves a bit, because things have changed since we were last there. We then had a bit of time to kill before the rehearsal, so we went up to the stands to watch the training. Malaysia were there for a bit, as were Denmark and Finland, and Thailand came at the end as well as Sri Lanka (yes, Pete Higman!). I did take a lot of pictures, but I can't put them up until the venue opens properly, so for the moment, here are the backs of the some of the Russian team walking through Wembley (!):


Our rehearsal, we found out today, was actually a dress rehearsal for tomorrow's dress rehearsal when the broadcasters arrive (presumably so we give a good impression tomorrow). We did a lot of walking on and off court with all of the line judges and umpires to work out the best ways of getting on to the courts, and my job was made all the more interesting by the fact that there, at the moment, appears to be a billboard in front of my chair, so at the moment my court mopping will be accompanied by a jump and a leap! The rehearsal was also made more comical by the fact that there were no players, so people were having to act on their behalf!


The umpires had arrived later in the afternoon than we had, so we were allowed to leave before 11, which means that tonight is a slightly earlier night/ journey back than   anticipated, which was good, because tomorrow is a full rehearsal and I imagine it will be quite extensive!

Olympic spot of the day: Zoe Smith in King's Cross.

A no cloud in the sky kind of day

I have a pretty good (or bad, depending upon how you view it!) track record with having adventures on trains and, true to form, even before 9AM today I was managing to keep up that tradition pretty well. For future reference, you will neither be kicked off the train nor have to pay £150 if you have an off-peak ticket for a peak-time train, as long as you have a Student Railcard. I say this because my morning seemed to consist of running off trains, running down platforms and then running along trains, all with a suitcase the size of a small house in tow. Also, for future reference, I much prefer the 'tickets please' announcement, as opposed to 'ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for a full ticket examination'!

Anyway... I arrived in London safely, left my suitcase at the flat where I will be staying for the majority of the Olympics, and then decided to be a right keen-bean and make my way back to central London. I was a proper Brit and graced Trafalgar Square with my M&S meal-deal and, continuing with the adventurous theme of the day, I ate with my feet in the one of the fountains (sorry, patrolling council lady) and then climbed Nelson's column (sorry, health and safety). Unfortunately for me, a lot of this experience (with particular emphasis on the sandwich eating part) was filmed by a Spanish film crew... I am blaming the ginger hair and traditional lemonade combination.

It was as much as I could do to make myself budge from my spot in the shade on Nelson's column, but I did want to go to the 'Road to 2012' exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, so I eventually motivated myself to move.

The exhibition was fantastic, in particular the way that they had included the stories of the athletes as well as just their portraits. I managed to tack onto the back of a tour of the Gallery as well, so I felt sufficiently tourist-y and well informed too. I am, however, still slightly confused about how Kate Middleton made it into the athletes section of the exhibition. Although I'm sure Marlborough were a good hockey team.

I then walked around Leicester Square before meeting my dad for tea. Along with the shrine to T-Rex's Mark Bolan practically on his doorstep (which I knew about), the visit back to his contained three exciting discoveries:

1. There are parakeets in his garden. I do not understand how this works at all.

2. Richmond Park is huuuuge, could quite easily be a safari park, and contains deer and a heck of a lot of cyclists. (Also, today I was able to apply the knowledge that a doe is a female dear, thank you Julie Andrews).

3. Dad is quickly becoming Jamie Oliver. Complete with commentary.

I am now safely in bed after having enjoyed a very lovely evening sat outside in the warmth under the stars on the balcony (please note: I here place emphasis on the 'warmth' part) (please note also: it didn't rain!).

My ever growing to-do list...

These are just some of the over 80 sculptures of the Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, that have been put up around London for the Games. They are near many of the main attractions and, after finding out about them yesterday, they have made my to-do list for the next couple of weeks just 80+ objects longer...

In other news, the Olympic torch is now in the capitol... After abseiling from a helicopter, past Tower Bridge and into the Tower of London! A lot of 19th century workers were also seen in Stratford heading towards the Olympic Stadium this morning... I'm led to believe that this is for rehearsals and is not the result of any sort of bizarre time-machine malfunction.

The Opening Ceremony is a slight sore-spot for me at the moment, as I found out a couple of days ago that I had been offered tickets to the rehearsals as a reward for all of the Games Maker-ing I've been doing. Due to a fail of pretty epic proportions on the part of Family Salisbury,  though, I didn't actually get this email until after the deadline, so, as a result, am not going to see the ''menagerie of animal performers''... (I am here quoting the Daily Mail to make this seem slightly less devastating). I did send a pre-9AM-tiredness-induced cranky email to LOCOG (sorry, Seb Coe) (not-so Olympic fact: my mum was in his maths class at school and he used to run with my uncle), but I've yet to receive a reply, so I'm debating buying myself a cheap ticket to Wicked in the West End for that night instead (I feel that £17 is more socially acceptable than quitting University to fund £2000+ for the Opening Ceremony)... However, on the plus side, I did see today that the Spice Girls have been confirmed for the Closing Ceremony, so I remain to live in hope that Ginger Jenny may get to see Ginger Spice at some point. Assuming, of course, that I check my emails...

Road to 2012

My mum and I recently went to an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery about the Queen. It consisted of photos and footage taken throughout her reign and, along with iconic artistic representations of her (such as those Roy Lichtenstein images), the exhibition documented her life through the decades.

We went to Matilda: The Musical in the West End shortly after going to the exhibition, and unfortunately didn't really have the time (nor the energy after Nadal's Wimbledon loss the night before!) to properly look around all of the Gallery, so I'd love to go back and take my time going around sometime (which is maybe not ideal during the hustle and bustle of the Olympics!). I'm hoping to at least manage to quickly go back there when I'm in London to look at the 'Road to 2012' exhibition which opened today, though.

After some extensive Googling (and it was pretty extensive, because all that Google seemed to want to tell me was that Kate Middleton went to the opening and wore an Olympic themed necklace), I managed to find out that the exhibition consists of pictures of althletes during their training sessions and also of their coaches and the people behind the Olympics, such as the local volunteer gardeners at Greenwich. I highly doubt that the badminton will be particularly well represented (if at all), however I have branched out to rowing in recent months and, from looking at previews of some of the photographs, it appears that it features quite heavily (this is probably due to the fact that Brits don't actually appear to be too shoddy at rowing).

Bearing in mind that the Queen and the Olympics are tied for 1st place in my mental list of favourite British things, I'm hoping that this exhibition will be just as good as the last one! (Dear Kate Middleton, you, your hubby and your brother-in-law are in a close 2nd place, so sorry for not dedicating this post to your necklace or Stella McCartney dress, but I promise to write about you properly if you turn up at the badminton. Hint. Hint. HINT).

Streb: One Extraordinary Day

Admittedly, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but on a Tarzan jump-of-faith at Go-Ape or Oblivion at Alton Towers kind of level. I can't really comprehend how you can do acrobatics on the spokes of the London Eye! (Don't worry mum, I'm not getting any ideas...)

The badminton courts are in the building!

My countdown to travelling down to London for the Olympics (note to self: buy train tickets asap) entered single figures today, so I thought that I'd get the blog-ball rolling.

Yesterday I had to go down to Wembley Arena for Venue Specific Training (also called VST by the many abbreviation loving people up at Olympic HQ).

Travelling there was minorly stressful due to a combination of Hard Rock Calling festival at Hyde Park, closure of the Victoria line and (probably mainly) me getting over-excited by a couple speaking German at the ticket-buying-booth next to me, meaning that I bought a ticket going to a station in Wembley that my train wasn't actually going to travel through (only to find out a couple of hours later that I actually have a Osyter card for unlimited travel in London until after the Olympics, so didn't even need to buy a ticket in the first place). Yes, Jenny! Anyway, thanks to the ticket conductor who, after briefly contemplating sending me back to Marylebone, decided to take pity on me and let me out at Wembley, I actually made it to the Arena with time to spare and sandwiches to eat. (Not-so-Olympic fact: Cliff Richard has performed at Wembley Arena more than any other artist).

The day began with presentations from various Team Leaders and Security Managers etc. for badminton and rhythmic gymnastics (who we're sharing the Arena with during the latter part of the badminton competition). The enthusiasm from everyone is, however cliché, infectious, and, if the lady managing the rhythmic gymnastics competition would have emphasised one more time how dynamic baton throwing can be, she would have had me switching sports there and then on the spot (Olympic fact: rhythmic gymnastics is one of two remaining female-only Olympic sports, the other one being synchronised swimming). As it happens, though, they apparently don't need a floor mopper, so I'm left a slightly gutted that I'll potentially never see the dynamic-ness of it!

We then split off into the teams that we'll be working in during the Olympics and, after completing some more training (I'm now an expert in the technique of safely lifting things), we went on a tour of the Arena and of some of the temporary builds in the Wembley area which will be used by the athletes for warming up etc. We've only moved into the Arena during the last week, so it is still very much a work in progress, but it is looking good! (Olympic fact: Wembley was used as a venue in the 1948 London Olympics, meaning that it is one of two venues being used at both Games, the other one being Earls Court). The usual stage has gone (though I did greatly enjoy walking out through the stage door onto the non-existent stage), the media booths and big screens are set up, and, most importantly (!), the badminton courts are on the floor. The umpires chairs were wrapped up near one of the warm up courts and (although I can't reveal any details), I can promise that they, along with the floor, and the floor mops, will have quite an exciting colour scheme!

The day ended with a treasure hunt around the Arena, which (despite the temporary builds all looking pretty identical) saw an epic win for the Field of Play team (helped along by our Team Leader just a little...), and resulted in a very happy Jenny, because winning involved chocolate.

I got back to Euston fine and with an hour and a half-ish to spare before my first ever First Class journey back up north (for some reason the ticket was cheaper for First Class than for Standard, but I'm not complaining!), so I decided to be a hardcore Games Maker and go to Trafalgar Square to take a picture of the Olympic countdown clock. I got to Leicester Square before the line closures and West-End go-ers got the better of me and I realised that I probably wasn't going to get back in time for my train if I took a too big of a de-tour... On the plus side, my Oyster card definitely works and I am now one Wenlock (Olympic fact: the founder of the Wenlock Olympian Games in 1850 is credited as the founding father of the modern Olympics) and quite a few Percy Pigs better off than I was before.

It was so good to actually be in the Arena and to see everything coming together after so much time. The next time that I'm there will be in a week or so for Sports Presentations, which are basically dress rehearsals of everything, so that the media know timings-wise how long things such as ceremonies and players/ umpires walking out onto court will take to broadcast.

Until then I'll leave you with this ridiculously cute gem, which I found on our training-CD: