BURNING STICK

I don’t know really what to make of the grand tour that the Olympic Flame seems to be currently making, progressing (or processing) all around the country, meandering its way eventually towards London by the most roundabout way possible. The idea behind this is probably a pretty sound one, in that for anyone who wants to see the thing, it will pass within fifteen miles of every postal code in the country at some point during its journey.

Personally, I’m really not all that fussed about the Olympics, if truth be told. It just seems like a lot of running and jumping and standing still to me that seems to have added up to a huge bill for very little reason, but then I’ve always found most competitive sport to be fairly pointless, so I’m probably not the best judge.

In my humble opinion, once Greece had gone to all the trouble of building all of their stadia back in 2004, it would have made a lot of sense if the international community had accepted that the Olympics had finally “come home” and just replenished and refurbished those venues and held the competition there every four years instead of going through all of the rigmarole of bidding and building and overspending and security worries that always seems to come alongside any of the games.

Holding them in Greece might guarantee some decent weather, too, which is more than London can, although it might be lucky.

You never know…

I remember watching the rowing back in 2004 whilst I was working on a writing project during the early weekend mornings and thinking what a lovely backdrop the event had. Somehow any and all of the venues this year just seem to me as if they can’t help but be a little bit drab and ordinary, because that’s pretty much how things are over here. Mind you, I always thought that the Thames motorboat chase sequence in “The World is Not Enough” looked drab and ordinary, but international audiences seemed to like it, so what do I know? Perhaps it’s just that the place in which you happen to be living in always seems a little bit ordinary, whereas everywhere else seems more exotic.

Except Sydney. People living in Sydney always seem to look terribly smug to be the people living somewhere so spectacular and beautiful looking. That young chef who made that “Bill’s Food” programme (Bill, I think his name was...) always looked particularly pleased with himself…

Purely as a matter of passing interest, and mostly because I wanted to take umbrage at the fact that Lesser Blogfordshire is so far beyond the back of beyond that the torch would fail in its mission of passing within our fifteen mile radius, I had a quick look at the route and was rather disappointed to find that it was indeed passing within only eight miles of Holmes Towers. Curses! These planners are better at these things than I like to give them credit for...

Not that I’ll be going.

We did, when discussing it at work, wonder whether it was worth planning an “office day out” as an excuse for going and having a gawp, but we decided against it. This was just as well because it turned out that our particular opportunity to see the mighty flame is due to take place on a Sunday morning, and it will have left the area by 10.10 AM that day. Whether it manages to reach its destination at 7.30 in the evening after its thirteen and a half hour journey that day remains to be seen. After all, the route shows it passing through at least three areas in which I might expect somebody to have a go at nicking the thing and flogging it off for its metal content, or (if any of those hypothetical thieves are daft enough - as they might very well turn out to be) flog it off for the price of a small house on Ebay...

So cynical…

Still, I do wonder how many people they will actually persuade to get up to get into town for 6 o’clock on a Sunday morning just to see a burning stick go fleetingly by on its way to go everywhere but its proper destination for 70 days...

Well, it was always a bit of a hard sell in my book, but then I guess I’m not really in their target demographic, and I’m fairly sure that the whole thing will be terrifically successful and engender some level of “Civic Pride”. After all, who wants to be seen to be the only city that didn’t come out and support this great venture, or mad folly (delete as applicable), especially in the only part of the whole flipping thing - apart from the sailing of course - that actually seems to want to include anywhere in the country outside the capital…?