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!