One year ago

Well, London, world, mopping blog readers (leave the best until last, eh?), it has been a year.

I doubt I will surprise anyone by saying this, but I miss being in London and it being 2012.

I am currently not in London and it is 2013 (well spotted, I can hear you say), but I can hear the Underworld track ''And I Will Kiss'' in the background of the BBC's ''Anniversary Games'' (a song which has, since, become my most loved of EPIC DRIVING TRACKS, if you would like a fact of the day), I can see the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Stadium, I have just watched the Games Maker who sat next to me at the SPOTY Awards be interviewed (small world and all that), and am just about to re-witness the Queen jumping out of a helicopter. So, as far as I am concerned, today is a good day. Just as it was a year ago.

On my desk at university I keep a laminated article of quotes that people made about the Games Makers. You know, just because in moments of essay-desperation a casual ego-boost is always helpful. (Dear lecturer who will remain anonymous, you may have set me this essay, but I mopped the Olympic badminton courts, SO THERE, NURRRRRRRR).

As fellow blogger and former sports editor of the Independent, Charlie Burgess, said:

''The Big Purple and Red Society really did work. Let’s keep it that way''.

We did the Olympics well, London. And so, with my Olympic-fix sorted for the time being and with renewed pride to be British (welcome to the world, George the Royal Baby- I would be lying If I said that I wasn't one of the super-keen-enthusiasts who kept the Tatler live-stream from the Lindo Wing on for two days), I feel fairly well prepared to head off to be an English Language Assistant in Germany for a while. But not until I've had my interview for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. This volunteering malarkey has to be done properly, after all. 

Kate Middleton, I knew you wouldn't let me down.

I know that you've all missed the mopping blog, so this is my Christmas present to you. You're welcome.

I returned home from university on Friday and, on Saturday morning, by complete and utter chance, I woke up and checked my phone at the exact moment that the BBC decided to release more seats for the Sports Personality of the Year Awards. To cut the long story short, less than 24 hours later I was in the car on the way to London, being the stereotypical Brit that I am and flailing at the prospect of seeing royalty.

Now, in true Daily Mail style, I will begin with the clothes (only hopefully I will do this with at least a half-decent grasp of the English language). My spontaneous-last-minute-ticket-getting had left me with a dilemma: Games Maker uniform or relatively-new-ish dress? I opted for the dress option, which was surprising really, as I do love a good opportunity to be a keen Games Maker and whack out the uniform. In hindsight, though, we will refer to me not doing so as 'Good Move Number 1'. You will need this knowledge later.

After a brief cheese-sandwich-stop at my dad's, we headed to the ExCel Arena, thus clocking up my first trip to an Olympic venue that wasn't Wembley Arena. We were pretty early even after the security checks and ticket checks and toilet trips, but we decided to go to our seats anyway. This will be known as 'Good Move Number 2'.

At the point of us getting into the arena/ studio, the only people there seemed to be members of the BBC Broadcasting Team, and the occasional few super-early-spectators. Our seats appeared to be the ones which hadn't been claimed by the press, and they were situated in the floor seating area, with only one block separating us from the athletes and various other big-wigs (admittedly, some of whom I'd never heard of, but a lot seemed to have 'Lord' before their names, so I'm assuming that they were at least vaguely exciting!). As we were so early (and we're talking over an hour early here, which is fairly unheard of for yours truly), we went for the casual explore option ('Good Move Number 3'), and I ended up on the stage. You know, as you do.

We also walked around the seating area for the VIPs, name spotting at who was going to be in attendance, where they were going to be sitting and who they were going to be sitting with ('Good Move Number 4'). This turned into a slight case of dad vs. daughter as to who could recognise the most names and who could find certain people the fastest...: Seb 'was in my mum's class at school' Coe (yes, I will spend most of the next decade getting mileage out of that fact), Bradley Wiggins, Jess Ennis, Tom Daley, Victoria Pendleton, Nicola Adams, Kelly Holmes, Drogba, Muamba, Michael Owen, Jonathon Edwards, Boris Becker (I went to school in Germany with his son by the way, just to drop that in there!), Sarah Storey, Mo Farah and Ken Livingstone were all my victories. Without any Games Maker training behind him, of the ones that I'd actually heard of, dad appeared to manage a mere Becky Adlington, Roger Bannister and Gail Emms. Totalling 46 Olympic medals to me and 5 to him. Booyah.

It was only after we'd spent a pretty considerable amount of time around the area near the stage that, upon turning around, we realised that the area that we had been in had since been shut off to the general public, and there were rows of people behind the barriers trying to get as close as they could to the stage... This was potentially the first time in my life that the saying 'the early bird catches the worm' has ever applied. Most of the time, I just wish that the poor early bird could go back to bed. Anyway, we stayed where we were for a while, before being let back through the barriers to where we were meant to be in in the first place...

We found our way back to our seats to discover that everyone had a golden goody bag sellotaped to the back of them (yey, for freebies), and then we sat down, ready for the pre-show. Frank Turner opened the non-televised part of the event, and, between him and Emeli Sandé singing, we were briefed on when/ when not to clap/ stand up/ sit down, as well as having various elements of the show which would require our participation explained to us: holding up glow sticks and torches during the memorial, and doing a turny-around-jumpy-thing in tribute to Man City winning the league.

 

I will not recount the show, as I do not want to put BBC iPlayer out of business, but, to put it very mildly, it was pretty exciting (and you should potentially even stop reading my blog now and go and watch it if you haven't already).






Seb 'was in my mum's class at
school' Coe (I told you that I'd be
getting mileage out of it!) begins
his walk-on to accept his award
from directly in front of our block

Rather than the usual 10 nominations for the main award, they had extended it to 12 for 2012, and most of the show centred around introducing these athletes. Each athlete took to the stage in turn to be interviewed and, each time that this happened, we would have to stand up and clap to 'cover their walk on'. We would then sit down whenever the athlete had reached the stage and the presenter had begun to speak. This clapping-and-standing-arrangement was all well and good, but I was sat on my coat to give me some added height and, every time that we played this glorified version of musical chairs, the coat would fall off the back of my chair... The very nice man behind did keep picking it up for me, but, by the 12th time, I was feeling rather like a baby throwing their toys out of a pram!

As the night went on, the spontaneous standing ovations became more frequent and longer. Not being the tallest person, this became fairly problematic for me and, for the last hour or so, I adopted the standing-on-chair-technique and let the poor man behind do something other than pick up my coat (please note: due to the staggered seating, no one behind me was visually impaired by my sudden growth spurt). Luckily, health and safety didn't appear to care that I had suddenly become about a foot taller than the rest of the audience, and this was very much a relief, because in the quick mental weigh-up that I had done between fractured limbs and seeing the mother of the future monarch, I'd gone for the latter.

With it being in London and all, as soon as the transmission finished, there was a massive rush for the doors to get to the last trains. It was at this point that I realised that I'd far rather be stranded at the ExCel, than not attempt to crash the VIP section whilst it was still occupied with the VIPs...

And so the mission began. (Dear MI5/ MI6, please take this as my application for future employment).

Being on the short side and, in that moment, resembling more of a ninja than a human, I somehow managed to go against the flow of the crowd to get to the front-ish of the arena by ducking under a series of elbows. Upon reaching the front, I discovered that there was actually security positioned to block people from accessing the VIP area, and that there was a crowd of uniformed Games Makers, who had been sitting relatively nearby, all being prevented from getting any closer.

Please note: If you are currently on a computer which involves internet/ iTunes, please turn on dramatic music now.

Mission SPOTY Stage

In a truly James Bond/ secret agent inspired moment, I realised that this security set-up was fundamentally flawed: on my side of the arena, it was only positioned at the front...
Meaning that if I entered the press seating area slightly further back, I could simply walk through the seating aisles and arrive at the target destination. And, being an undercover Games Maker disguised as a civilian (see 'Good Move Number 1'), once I made it in, it hopefully wouldn't be too blatantly obvious that I wasn't technically allowed in there. (Unless anyone had an encyclopedic knowledge of New Look's selection of dresses... or checked my wrist for an accreditation band).

Obviously (and much to my Grandma's amusement when I recollected this to her yesterday), this wasn't exactly an opportunity that I was going to pass up on...



My lack of photo with Zara is,
sadly, as a result
of my lack of knowledge 
as to 
when curtsying is/ is not required...!

A blurry Kate on her way out...

Finishing the year in true style, I made it in without even being questioned, and soon found myself stood casually stood next to the Queen's granddaughter (aka Zara Phillips), and directly in front of the stage. I here use the word 'casually', because I realised that flailing around in mad excitement would probably have blown my supposed VIP cover just a tad. I do, however, have to admit that being 'casual' at this point wasn't exactly the easiest thing to pretend to do, as Zara seemed to be waiting for KATE MIDDLETON, who was posing for photographs about a metre away, along with David Beckham, Jess Ennis and Bradley Wiggins. This was obviously a HUGE DEAL and, after going an entire Olympics with only Princess Anne for Royal company, my Royal count is currently at an undetermined amount until someone decides to release how many future monarchs we are to actually expect from Ms. Middleton. This is obviously massively exciting for a cringingly enthusiastic Brit like myself who has a picture of the Royal family on the door of their university room...


Followed by Zara, Kate left pretty soonish, and I decided that my best plan-of-action was to head towards the block of seating that I had previously established as containing the most interesting people (see 'Good Move Number 4'). This plan will be known as 'Good Move Number 5', and it resulted in me finding myself stood with Victoria Pendleton and her fiancé. Slightly devastatingly, I also remembered that she had been sat with Tom Daley, but he was nowhere in sight. Although, admittedly, when I say 'nowhere in sight', my shortness and flat-shoe-wearing, when combined with being surrounded by women in heels and the likes of the 6 foot 5 Sir Steve Redgrave, actually meant that my sight was fairly restricted to shoulders. In defence of my height, though, from looking at the picture that we took, Victoria Pendleton probably normally joins me in the people-who-are-at-least-a-foot-shorter-than-Steve-Redgrave-club, but she was in heels... We also appear to be wearing extremely similar dresses (let the Stella McCartney vs. New Look battle commence)... In fact, Vic, if you're reading, why don't we just cut to the chase and be twinzies? One gold medal each? (I'll even settle for the one from Beijing). Sound fair enough to you?

But anyway... I digress.

The time that followed featured athlete after athlete: Louis Smith, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Steve Redgrave, Colin Jackson, Hannah Cockroft, Katherine Grainger, Kelly Holmes... the list goes on.  

I was reluctant to flail around with the camera too madly for fear of my mopper-in-disguise-cover being blown, but I managed to get a few photos...



My programme, confetti, and some
name-stickers. (Google tells me
Scott is V.Pendleton's boyfriend)
(I also have one belonging to
Tom Daley's mum somewhere,
but it's currently gone awol)

I survived my VIP-section-crash completely undetected (despite having 'gained' a few of the name-stickers from the chairs on my way out), and made it home without any dramatic James-Bond-resemblant-car-chases. In fact, the only thing vaguely out of the ordinary was a singing train conductor on the platform on the way back, but I hope that he becomes a permanent post-Olympic fixture... His rendition of the Jubilee-line-stations to a tune of his own composition was truly one to keep. 

The following morning it was back to reality, and I took the morning train back up north at a time which I normally hope to sleep through. I couldn't face the prospect of a complete non-Olympic-related-normality, though, and so I made the journey back via the Jess Ennis post-box.









A casual bit o' self-publicity.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was interviewed about my mopping adventures by my local newspaper in September. The article came out in October and is to be held entirely responsible for my new nickname...: 'Mrs Mop'. Anyway, if you're interested in finding out how I managed to be ''living the dream while mopping the floor'', the link is here:
http://www.lep.co.uk/sport/other-sports/meet-mrs-mop-1-4985851


Also, the Games Maker Choir, who I first saw at the Athletes' Parade, are releasing a single tomorrow and are attempting to get it to Christmas number 1. The song, featuring Alistair Griffin, is called 'I Wish For You The World', and is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. Obviously, I am not the slightest bit biased (although, in all seriousness, I was at James Arthur's first audition in Newcastle, so I am technically qualified to make the judgement call), but it would be the perfect end to 2012 to see it top the charts (at the moment it's 2nd in the odds behind the X Factor winner). All proceeds go towards Olympian/ Paralympian charities, so go and download it tomorrow!
For now, you can like their Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/iwishforyoutheworld


















And now... if you've stayed with this post until the end, I would like to break the news to you that this morning I got tickets to go and see the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards live in London tomorrow. It goes without saying that this probably calls for a comeback of the mopping blog. So, for now, watch this space and please excuse me while I go and try to find a dress.

We do not mope, we mop

I will miss Olympic Britain. I'm sure post Olympic Britain will be quite exciting too and everything, but I'd really much rather that it stayed August 2012 so that I could mop the Olympic badminton courts forever (I am aware that I currently sound like a spoilt child having a tantrum...). Obviously there's probably time limit when sofa-hopping stops being socially acceptable but, technicalities aside, I wouldn't exactly pass on the opportunity to do it all over again, and again, and again. And again.

After the Closing Ceremony I was left with a distinct sense of not really knowing what to do with myself. I tried mopping our dining room floor, but it just wasn't the same. I'll give it another attempt at some point with Chariots of Fire as a backing track, but I somehow doubt that that will work either...




Just so that I transfer my mad-mopping-skills to the next generation (who have hopefully been super inspired), after much careful consideration (due to the obvious extremely technical nature of court mopping), I have come up with court-mopper's-court-mopping-top-tips-for-tip-top-court-mopping:


1. Pay attention to the umpire (hint: you are most likely to be needed after a player falls over, so looking at them after this has occurred is normally quite helpful). No, don't pay attention to what is going on behind you (warning: this may involve fixed ladies doubles matches and booing) or to the yellow-shirted-Malaysians in the crowd who approach cheering in a somewhat orchestral manner (yes, they do have a conductor who sits two rows in front, but stop looking!). When the umpire gestures to you, you get up. When they don't, you don't (even if you have a player stood in front of you who clearly would appreciate some mopping action). Normally, if the phrase 'court mopper, please' is said, you could potentially have been paying more attention...

2. At 11 points, you should get up asap and mop from the service line to the back of the court. (NB: where possible, all mopping should be done in sync with your mopping partner...). If there are slight court access issues, elbowing the offending cameraman is often productive.

3. At 21 points (but not in the final set) you should get up asap and mop from the front of the net to the back of the court, again, in sync with your fellow mopper. (NB: during the interval quite an exciting sign with a countdown clock makes an appearance on one side of the court, and this should be mopped around and not hurdled. You are a court mopper and not Jessica Ennis).

4. If, at any point during your mopping adventures, a player walks back on to the court (with the exception of when you are called on to the court during a set), you should clear the court. It does not matter how much/ little you have/ have not mopped. Just. Get. Off. (NB: if they want you to come back on, they will ask the umpire and your services may be called upon again. It is perhaps best to view this as two mopping excursions for the price of one). You may even be lucky enough to hear the phrase 'Lin Dan wants you'...

5. If, once you have returned to the mopping chair, the line judges are stood up, you should stand up too. In fact, just do what the line judges do (other than the line calling part, obviously) because I find that this keeps everyone happy.  And they may just give you free sweets too.

6. Point of note: the coaches will want to go on to the court at the same time as you. Try to Usain Bolt past them when possible, but bear in mind that it is probably best not to tackle and/or fence them with a mop.

7. Mopping should be done in straight lines. If you are mopping the entire court in three diagonal swooshes, something is potentially going slightly wrong at mopping HQ.

8. The two-handed mopping technique is generally the most successful. As is the lift-the-mop-up-before-turning-around-to-mop-in-the-other-direction technique. As tempting as it is, walking with the mop in one hand whilst simultaneously waving to your fans in the audience potentially isn't pro-mopping-etiquette.

9. Although you may have potentially valuable backhand clear technique tips to give to the players during a match, resist the temptation. Even if you would quite like Lin Dan's autograph/ T-Shirt/ badminton ability.

10. Caps should be worn at all times when on court...

11. Oh, and, just to state the obvious... don't stand on the shuttlecock.


Also, just to answer a query that has emerged... to the person who accessed my blog through the Google search of 'how much they get paid for moping': we do not mope, we mop.



So, that, people, was my summer job in 11 points. Not too shoddy, eh?!

In all seriousness, though, when I first applied to volunteer, I didn't know whether I would actually even see any of the Games (obviously, in hindsight, I've been extremely lucky with that one!). I applied because (as uncharacteristically cheesy as it may sound) I love the Olympics, I love badminton and I love London. At 11 years old I knew, as I sat and sneakily watched London win the bid in an ICT lesson during my first year of secondary school (sorry, Mr. Howarth), that I wanted to be there in some context. So, as far as I was concerned, why not volunteer?! The same applied to every Games Maker that I met: they wanted to be there.

The public reaction to the volunteers has been fantastic: I barely had a single train journey without someone being interested in where I was helping out and what I was doing. And, not that I'm the slightest bit biased, but I think that we might just have received the biggest round of applause at the Closing Ceremony...

Also, not that I'm expecting to be invited to any glitzy events anytime soon (mainly due to that fact that there are more Games Makers than would fit in a stadium and I am a mere mopper), but BOA chief, Lord Moynihan, has nominated the Olympic volunteers for the Sports Team of the Year award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards. Which currently makes him quite the legend in my books.

This summer has been, to put it mildly, the best experience ever. And, if and when they arrive, I intend to ensure that my grand children never hear the end of it.

I think that Seb 'went to school with my mum' Coe hit the nail on the head in his speech on Sunday: ''When our time came - Britain we did it right''.



A big Games Maker/ Mopper thank you to:

Mum, for letting ginger me loose in London. And for providing me with much amusement by trying to spot which one of the Spice Girls was Cheryl Cole during the Closing Ceremony... (For the record, the one that you eventually identified was actually Victoria Beckham. But you were so close).

Kerstin, Gerhard, Marion, Lynanne and Dad for providing beds for yours truly.

My fellow Wembley Games Makers, particularly to the other FOPers and to Fern, my FOP leader: 'You mop those courts'.

The Wall Street Journal and the Lancashire Evening Post for reading. (Even if I'm not the best at checking my emails/ answering my phone for interview proposals...)

South West Trains, for your free ice creams.

The Met line, for having a train with only 5 stops between Waterloo and Wembley.

To whoever first believed that London was great enough to host these Olympics. I do not know your name, but I really do love you.

And to the readers of the mopping blog!

''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!

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).

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: