The which seating block can we sit in issue continued today but, luckily, the woman on the door this morning mistook me for an athlete when I told her 'my team are up there' and so I made in fine. Although I would potentially suggest that she needs to brush up on her Team GB recognition skills slightly...
This morning I saw:
Men's singles bronze medal match: Chen Long (China) vs. Lee Hyun Il (Korea)
Men's doubles bronze medal match: Koo. KK & Tan. BH (Malaysia) vs. Chung. JS & Lee. YD (Korea)
Going through security this morning (please note: without house keys in my pocket this time, so no alarms were set off), it was beyond weird to get my head around the fact that today was the last day of the badminton competition. I wasn't mopping today because Young Games Makers do finals and, despite the baby face, I am apparently getting on a bit. Even though I wasn't in uniform, though, I kept looking around for the good ol' Games Maker trainers in their plastic bag (FOPers can't wear them other than on court) and the number of times I panicked today because I thought that I'd lost the bag (which was safely in my suitcase in the flat) was pretty ridiculous. 
I went back to our lounge over dinner (mainly to eat some of the line judge's food), and managed to get myself a shirt swap sorted as well. When we got our kit, we were all given two T-shirts, and one of the line judges asked if they could swap theirs for my spare once they'd finished their last match. The technical officials shirts are blue (complete with BWF shoulder-y things), so I was very happy to gain a top that clashed slightly less with ginger...
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| Please ignore my complete lack of regulation trousers/ shoes... |
I then went up to the seating to watch the men's finals.
This afternoon I saw:
Men's singles final: Lin Dan (China) vs. Lee Chong Wei (Malaysia)
Men's doubles final: Cai. Y & Fu. HF (China) vs. M. Boe & C. Mogensen (Denmark)
The men's singles final was probably the closest match that I've ever seen and, even in final points of the final set, I couldn't tell which way it was going to go. I did want Lin 'wants to be a popstar now' Dan to win, but was also slightly gutted when Lee Chong Wei lost. Lin Dan's celebration was absolutely epic but, what impressed me more, was how respectful he seemed towards Lee Chong Wei afterwards. The crowd were fantastic as well and they were so loud and there seemed to be so many flags, which added to the whole atmosphere. One of the umpires who I spoke to was saying that in Asia the crowds are so loud that when you introduce the players you may as well say that you have Mickey Mouse on your left and Donald Duck on your right, because it's too loud for anyone to hear, and I really think that you got a of a sense of that during today's finals. 
Just before the medal ceremony, it was announced over the tannoy that Ben Ainslie had won the sailing. There were a few Union Jacks in the Arena (despite the distinct lack of GB representation in the finals) and the crowd went mental, which will go down as one of my favourite Team-GB-winning reactions of the Olympics so far (along with, obviously, the Jess Ennis/ Greg Rutherford/ Mo Farah Bollywood wins and also everyone in the canteen standing up for the national anthem after we won the first cycling gold). 
The men's doubles final followed and China completed their complete and utter clean sweep of the badminton, meaning that, as of yet (we'll have to wait and see how the rhythmic gymnastics goes), no other national anthem has been played in Wembley yet during the Olympics (I'm not counting the 'God Save the Queen' rendition during the dress rehearsals!). It was, however, a nice change to see that there were three different flags raised during the Victory Ceremony!
After the final final, we went back to the lounge to watch the rest of the Andy Murray match/ shout encouragement at the TV (we had been Twitter-ing the live score and reporting to the stand throughout the doubles final, much to the amusement of Peter Gade), before sprinting around the entire Arena to try and get photos of everything because the clean-up operation was already underway. And I am now about to slow your Internet speed down majorly with a couple of these picture highlights...:
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| Spot the floor mopper in the lounge... |
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| Yey for Team Fern!/ Team FOP! |
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| Considering a career change to a line judge (and probably not looking serious enough for it)... |
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| Pippi Longstocking was always my favourite. |
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| I have some Chinese water bottles. Ebay, anyone?! |
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| Court 1, 20 seconds *stops mopping* |
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| Doctor for the afternoon... Just don't get injured please because I'm far too squeamish. |
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| Yes, I went there. |
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| Despite my own probably-not-legal serve, I also did some service judge-ing. |
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| I did debate taking the mop home, but I'm not sure I'd have been too popular on the Underground carrying it... |
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| London 2012 |
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| The warm-up courts |
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| The Olympic rings |
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| Gold medal for ermm... floor mopping?! |
It was very strange leaving Wembley and the badminton, but I would go back and do it all again in a heartbeat if I could. I'm still in London for a couple of days, so the blogs will still continue for a while (I know that this has secretly made your day and you can breathe a sigh of relief now). For now, though, I will leave you with an except of a conversation which I got caught up in on the train on the way to Hyde Park/ the world's largest bark park to play some badminton and watch some non-badminton related Olympics yesterday evening.
Very loud Canadian girl: (reading out news headlines) Andy Murray beat Switzerland's Roger Federer... (progresses onto reading texts) that's so funny.
Annoyed English woman opposite: Why is Andy Murray winning funny?
Very loud Canadian girl: It's not.
Annoyed English woman opposite: Is it ironically funny because America didn't win? We've waited so long for him to win. I don't find it funny.
Very loud Canadian girl: I didn't say that him winning was funny.
Very loud Canadian girl #2: Maybe we should speak in French now.
Annoyed English woman opposite: I speak French too.
Very loud Canadian girl: (looks at the extremely cute Chinese toddler next to me in an attempt to change subject) is he yours?
Me: Not that I know of.
P.S. Sorry today's blog took a while to get up, it took me until 1 this afternoon to sleep off my mopping tiredness!
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