Wednesday 8th August
When they first announced the ticket lottery, I went a bit mad, and bid for all sorts of sports and was ready to part with nearly £2000 to get some tickets. Like many people I never anticipated the sheer volume of people trying for tickets, or the bizarre lottery which would result in a few people winning tickets in all sorts of sports and many like me getting nothing. Disbelief soon turned to anger and disgust, and for a while I wanted nothing more to do with buying tickets, so I ignored the early morning release of further batches of tickets, but my daughter Laura kept trying and did get some tickets. She was generous enough to offer me one, and yesterday I went to the morning session of the athletics. Up incredibly early to get a good look around Olympic Park before the first events at ten. It was wonderful, even just walking around as everyone you saw was smiling, beaming actually. And I was struck by the little things like the abundance of wild flowers growing in huge blocks of colour as if accidentally growing there, the perfect reflection of English grass verges.
I saw women’s javelin and men’s triple jump qualifications, both of which had no British success, but we did have some races, 400 metres men’s hurdles and 5000 metres womens heats, both of which allowed us to cheer the mostly successful GBR runners on, wailing like crazed banshees in our excitement. And then the icing on the cake – the 200 metres men’s heats, and a chance to see at very close quarters the fabulous Usain Bolt. And the man did not fail to impress. If you can see charisma at a distance of fifty yards then we saw it today, the man is such a character, you just have to love him.
So a wonderful day which has either made an old man very happy, or a happy man very old, I am not sure which.