What do you get if you put Usain Bolt in an ice bath?

 

Luckily, and much to my relief, Lufthansa didn't strike on Sunday 9th, so I was able to fly back home. Although, when I say 'home', I actually spent all of about 3 hours there before driving down to London. According to Google Maps and my calculations, this totalled 774 miles in 6 hours worth of travelling, and I am considering this to be a new personal best.

When I got to the flat I watched the Closing ceremony of the Paralympics, before heading to bed an hour later than originally planned, due to accidently having reached the point of no return by tuning in to Channel 4+1 instead of Channel 4...

The morning was an early one, but, after a dramatic run for the train in a style that if it hadn’t been for my Games Maker uniform, I’m sure could have been mistaken for that of Usain Bolt, I was well and truly woken up.

I headed to Trafalgar Square to buy some breakfast and, after having made a Games Maker friend along the way and had John Inverdale come up to me to say thank you for my Games Maker-ing (one of my stronger starts to a day!), I went to Horse Guard's Parade to eat my Meal Deal fit for a Games Maker. (I would here mention the name of the Supermarket where said Meal Deal was purchased, but it is the major rival of the Supermarket which sponsored the Paralympics, so I'll be a responsible Games Maker and miss it out for LOCOG's sake...)

I spent the morning in the area around The Mall, before the police did a security sweep and we all had to wait outside the gates of 'Area 5' (the beach volleyball Games Makers were well acquainted with these areas, but the Wembley mopper experienced some minor orientation difficulties along the way). We were then joined by the rain and also by the Games Maker Legacy Choir, who sang Land of Hope and Glory on repeat for a while, before switching to lots of songs about loving London.

 

It was the first time after the Olympics that I'd been around lots of Games Makers, and, in true Games Maker style, the stories were flowing. I met a 'Brunel' from the Opening Ceremony and spoke with a woman who had given up 3 days of every week since February to help to organise the Ceremonies. The story of the day, however, came from someone who had worked on Events Services at one of the training venues which had been used before the Olympics.

This Games Maker had been working in the ice bath room during the Jamaican team pre-Olympics ice bath session. Usain Bolt and Blake had been in opposite ice baths and, after a few minutes, the two of them had decided to start to have a water fight. Said Games Maker was alone in the room with the two of them as they began to throw the water from the ice baths across the room and at each other. Doubting his authority to make any comment, said Games Maker went outside to find the Jamaican team coach who had brought the athletes into the room. Upon finding the coach and telling her what was happening, said Games Maker was pretty shocked by her distinct lack of shock. Instead, the coach rolled her eyes, looking entirely unsurprised at the ice bath adventures of Bolt and Blake, walked calmly into the ice bath room and ordered them to ''stop or stay in the ice for 40 minutes''. Her response to their protests that they would freeze was simply, ‘’ I do not care’’. And so the Bolt and Blake ice bath adventures ceased.


After quite an extensive wait outside, we were let in to the infamous ‘Area 5’ of The Mall, where we were entertained until the Parade began by grannies in drag on scooters and a piano-playing nun. We were able to watch the start of the Parade on the big screen nearby and, in the pre-Parade wait, what shocked us all the most (other than the appearance of a swoosh of floppy blonde hair (aka Boris Johnson) right next to us and Eddie Izzard’s mission to shake every single one of our hands) was just how packed the streets of London were. Even the side streets, where you would probably be lucky to see the busses, let alone the athletes, were packed as far as you could see!



Jess 'Bus 3' Ennis

Anyway, our time came and the gates to The Mall opened and the athletes were greeted by lots of very excited Games Makers, who had all had a good two hours of TV coverage and Google-ing time behind them to work out who was on which bus. And, after having had slightly better phone internet than those around me, I am now left to wonder whether I will ever not remember ‘’Mo Farah- Bus 1, Jess Ennis- Bus 3, Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Sarah Storey- Bus 7, Tom Daley- Bus 8’’, after having repeated it so many times...



It was great to see so many signs thanking the Games Makers

The only way that I can describe the experience that followed was that it was a total sensory overload (obviously in the best possible way). It was just (probably to state the obvious) athlete, after athlete, after athlete and, to Team GB and Paralympics GB’s credit, medal, after medal, after medal. The woman next to me stood there, not knowing really what to say, and just repeating ‘well done, well done, well done’, to every single passing athlete, which summed it all up really, I think.


Chris 'Bus 7' Hoy and Sarah 'Bus 7' Storey

When the athletes reached Buckingham Palace, they were all brought up onto a stage on the Memorial and the concert began. According to my dad (who was watching on TV), it was started by Amy Macdonald, but I think there may have been technical difficulties as far as the speakers were concerned if this is the case... I did, however, see The Pet Shop Boys, The Noisettes and Katherine Jenkins, before David Cameron, Princess Anne, and Boris Johnson spoke.

Victoria 'Bus 7' Pendleton

Now, although I do greatly enjoy a bit of royalty, I have to admit that our Boris did steal the show in a pretty epic style (on the epic Boris moments scale, it surpassed the awkward Olympic handover flag wave in Beijing and was equalled only by the Boris-stuck-on-a-zip-wire-in-Victoria-Park-holding-two-Union-Jacks-live-internet-stream) with the most patriotically hilarious speech of the century, which left the entire Mall (and probably the surrounding areas of London) chanting his name.

After the chants had died down, the photographic challenge that was the fly-by began. I love watching planes (as my housemates will back me up on!) and, even if my photos do not do it any justice whatsoever (there’s a reason that the Mopper does a languages degree!), there was something pretty special/ British about getting bruised hips from leaning on railings on The Mall whilst watching the Red Arrows fly over Buckingham Palace...

I stayed around after the Parade until the athletes disappeared and the devastating line ‘’ we don’t want to, but we’re now going to have to end the Olympic TV coverage’’, was heard on TV sets across Great Britain. And, yes, I did see a tear from Seb Coe.

I then headed to Trafalgar Square, where the last thing I saw before heading to the train station was a couple of Games Makers spontaneously Irish dancing with Chinese tourists in front of the National Gallery. Olympic London, I love you.

I had a 1^st Class ticket for the way home because, for some reason, it had worked out cheaper than standard class, so, after using the Games Maker muscles to help an elderly couple with their bags, I went and sat in the lounge for a bit and watched the breaking news of Seb Coe running for BOA Head with lots of Games Makers, London Ambassadors and Team GB coaches.

Heartbreakingly, I then had to get on a train to go home and actually leave Olympic London. However, on the way back, I did something that would make our Boris swell with pride: I had a three hour long spontaneous conversation on public transport.

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!