Olympic hilarity

Can't get started on my paint job and it's too rainy for gardening so have instead been following the unfolding Olympic transport fiasco. A specially designed "Games Lane" has now opened in time for the arrival of the first international teams and this has led to 32-mile tailbacks. The first arriving athletes ended up on coaches where the drivers did not know the way to the Olympic village and, in the case of a coach full of Australian officials, was apparently even unable to operate the satnav. An Australian team doctor managed to get the device working, only to find out that the Olympic village had not been preloaded onto the system. That coach took a total of 4 hours for the journey between Heathrow and the Olympic village in Stratford.

One coach with American athletes didn't take quite as long, only 3 hours, but long enough for one of them to tweet in polite desperation "Athletes are sleepy, hungry and need to pee. Could we get to the Olympic Village please."

Olympic coach drivers who don't know their way around London (wonderfully predicted in the satiric comedy Twenty Twelve Twenty Twelve -- coach gets lost) and Olympic security guards who may or may not speak the majority language (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9399841/Olympics-I-dont-know-if-guards-speak-English-says-G4S-chief.html) -- it is all very promising. A Muslim friend of ours dreads the Olympics because he is convinced that a terrorist would get through and do their worst -- "and they'll blame it on Muslims, you'll see." I think we can calm him down now. Whoever runs the security services in this country only has to look out for one thing: a bloke with a lanyard and a badge who looks as though he knows exactly what he's doing and where he's going. That's your man, right there. Nab him before he can do any real damage with his scary competence.


And for some light relief: the Legendary Jack Dee sketch from the 1990s, envisaging a British effort at staging the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Highly unpatriotic and very appropriate.

Back to painting now and more of Twenty Twelve.