10 Downing Street and the Trafford Centre

(Obviously it did include an address, but I've edited it out
to avoid any unwanted parties on my doorstep)

I paid a flying visit home the other day and was super excited to find out that there was a letter from my new BFF, PM Dave Cameron, in my letter pile on the kitchen table. Now, bearing in mind the fact that my letter pile isn't ever particularly well sorted/ neat/ tidy/ read, me actually discovering my post from Downing Street was pretty much a minor miracle. But nevertheless a very exciting one. And, given the circumstances, I also decided to make a rare exception, and accept the usage of my full name...

Spotted looking a tad out of place
at a recent badmo tournament!

A blast from my Velodrome past... Yes, I
did once dabble in trophy presenting...

The following day I headed to the Trafford Centre with my mum to look at heaters (my blog is so super exciting, I know!) and also for some Team GB cycling action. Now, in a strange sporting link, there are actually badminton courts in the middle of the National Cycling Centre (aka the Manchester Velodrome) and so I have previously been known to play with Team GB whizzing around the track (complete with their coach's bell and megaphone combo, which isn't exactly the best recipe for success when combined with my admittedly-not-fantastic attention span...). Also, just because I'm whacking out the big facts today, I did actually make my mopping debut there at the 2006 English National Badminton Championships (Wikipedia, take note).

 

But anyway... long story short and badminton and cycling connections aside, an Olympic gold medal and an Olympic silver medal decided to make an appearance in Waterstones. Along with, obviously, their owner, Victoria Pendleton, and her recently released book, 'Between the Lines'. (I am aware that that sounded mildly like the start of one of those ''an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scottish man walk into a bar'' jokes, but I can only ever remember the start of them, so please don't expect a punchline or any da, da, da, boom cymbals or anything). 

 

I'm an unashamed completely nosey Mopper and I love autobiographies (Gail Emms, get on it asap), so, in true Games Maker vs. languages student style, I had been switching between reading 'Between the Lines' and 'Harry Potter' in Russian ever since the former came out. Just before the Olympics both Victoria Pendleton and Usain Bolt had been featured on BBC documentaries within a couple days of each other, and I'd watched the two programmes in succession as I'd packed for the big move to London. Bearing in mind that they're both massively successful world class athletes, I wasn't surprised at all by Usain Bolt's confidence. Her, well, distinct lack of it, was slightly more surprising. I'll let her (and probably the Daily Mail) tell her story, but the lady on the till when I bought the book was pretty accurate when she described the book as being ''really honest''. It's honest to the point that it's not always easy to read, but, at the same time, it's refreshing that she has been so open, and, while the Mopper is no book critic, she would greatly encourage that you read it. (It's better than my blog, I promise).


Anyway, as we can all probably tell where this story is going, Victoria Pendleton signed muh book and made muh day. She was also absolutely lovely (and slightly worried about her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing this season) and can be added to the (now pretty long) list of people who think that I'm far younger than I actually am...

In other news, I was recently interviewed and the mopping blog may well be featured in the paper some time soon... You heard it here first, people! Da, da, da, boom! (Ok, I lied when I said there was no punchline).

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.