Safe and Secure

Today, it’s just a 1,000 days to the Olympics in London.

I was looking forward to going, but with Harry’s problems, I just wonder if I’ll make it.  Life is so fragile.

There has been a lot of speculation about what London will do in 2012 to top Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

I said before that I’m with Prince Philip on these.  All you need is someone sensible like the Queen to say something nice and welcoming and then say “Let the Games begin!”

But if we are to have one, then why not have one for everyone that is free. 

London has the Thames, so they could have floats that started at Chelsea and processed to Greenwich.  London is so ethnically mixed, we could get each group of supporters to create a barge for their country.  It would be spectacular and totally different.

But the dignitaries, free-loaders, hangers-on and suits wouldn’t like it.

It seems a long time since I posted.

Two weeks ago, I had a call from a life-long friend, client and incidentally someone with whom, I’d actually shared some very good pleasures.  No!  I’ll say it.  Sex!  I should say that that was before I married my second husband and whilst he was married to his first wife, but all that is another story.  He had a severe problem with an investment in quite a remote and inaccessible part of the world and would I like to go there and do an assessment for him.

As I’d always wanted to go there, it took me about two minutes to decide and about an hour to convince David to unlock me.  I partly wished he was an engineer, a scientist or something practical, as he could have come and helped me out.  But who wants a lawyer, when you’re sorting out a company.  You might need one when it’s failed, but if you’re trying to save it, I think red rags and bulls.

I got back on Saturday and spent most of yesterday sleeping a long flight off, so it’s only now I can start blogging again.

But one thing that will be off limits is any talk of where I’ve been.

It’s funny though to come back and find out we’ve won all those medals at the Olympics.  I did see some of it, but then where I was didn’t follow Great Britain very much, so except when they showed the medal table, I had no idea how we are doing.  Even the Internet was difficult, in that the connection was poor and there was no access in the dump of a hotel where I was staying.  Only texts from my children kept me up to date.

I hope that I can enjoy 2012 more.

I watch rowing once every four years at the Olympics.  It’s good to see that UK does well.

But!  It’s impossible to tell which boat is which! 

Can’t they have a big flag on the side, so that I can tell which boat to cheer on?

I’m with Prince Philip on these.

Just watching the cricket as an alternative.  I’ll turn that off though, if England start losing wickets.

With the Olympics starting at 8:08 today on the 8th or August, 2008, I was asked by my daughter this morning what was my first memories of the games.  Note the date of the opening ceremony.  Those Chinese are very superstitious.

I was born in 1950 and can’t remember any games before 1960, which was Rome.  Rome was also the first Olympics shown live on television to a mass audience in the UK, with the possible exception of some of London in 1948.  If anybody could put me right on that one, I’d be pleased.

I was at primary school in 1960 and I can remember my teacher putting posters up of the city.  I can remember the Coliseum and I think there were also some from Roman Holiday, the Audrey Hepburn film.  But the latter may well be the tricks of history.

I only have one real memory of the games though.  I can still see Wilma Rudolph winning the hundred metres on our small black and white television.  She also won the 200 metres and was a member of the relay team.

But what was amazing about Wilma Rudolph and it’s probably why she has stuck in my mind is that she was twentieth of twenty-two children and she had suffered from polio as a child.  Now, in those far off days, nearly every class had their polio victim and many had withered arms or legs.  So she was a true inspiration to everybody, as it showed what by hard work can be achieved despite the most unpromising of starts.

I do not remember one of the heroes of the Rome games, the Indian athlete, Milkha Singh or the Flying Sikh.

He had won the Commonwealth Games gold medal in the quarter mile and is the greatest athlete to come out of the sub-continent.  But like Wilma Rudolph, he had a terrible start in life, losing both parents and several of his siblings in the violence of partition.

It is heartening to note that the legend of Milka Singh lives on in the shape of his son, Jeev, who is much more than an accomplished golfer.

Will Beijing produce heroes from such circumstances?