A walk in the Olympic Park
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| Nice flowers in the Olympic Park |
Getting tickets to London 2012 has to be the most difficult challenge of the Olympics. Forget the Synchronised Drowning and the Orbit Climbing. Just spend your days in front of a computer pressing SEARCH on a site powered by Ticketmaster. The hours of personal sacrifice, frustration and unrewarded effort. There are no Silver Medals for coming second in this game! The tickets appear on the site, you press request and get a window, complete with a spinning Union flag inspired logo, that makes you wait 15 minutes. By the time it counts down the tickets are no longer available or, more irritatingly, the system just logs you off. We are now experts at deciphering those weird, out of focus, characters that have to be keyed in if you want to return to the challenge. I think they should make 'logging in' part of every Olympic event. How entertaining would it be if Usain had to do this before taking to the starting blocks. Just imagine the commentators going wild when the Team GB athlete gets an easy one. Its all Lower Case, he going to win! The Australian has forgotten his glasses! The Egyptian has input it backwards!
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| Lots of hugging on the Handball Court |
Wills and Kate must be good at it, amazed they got so many tickets! Fair play - what a ticket tally! The future of the monarchy is in very good hands.
We eventually got tickets of course. To avoid accusations of drug-taking or cheating we can reveal that the secret is multiple sessions and continual and uninterrupted pressing of search. Look away for a second and you can miss the latest ticket release, 'you take over, I need the toilet'.
Oh, what a journey. Want to thank all the people who made this possible, all those carrots, all the early morning log-ins and of course we couldn't see anything now without our sponsors Specsavers!
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| In the net? |
We had next-day tickets to ....... a Ladies Handball quarter final. We thought it would be like Netball but without the skirts. In reality its a much more aggressive game. The object of the game is to throw a ball in an angry manner at a tall Lady trapped in a fairly small net. The Brazilian team were very good, they kept hitting the poor unfortunate Norwegian keeper. High fives, hand slapping and lots of hugging appear integral to the game. Oh, and you can run off and sit down when the music starts like in party games, not sure how they decide who comes on instead though. This all goes on for about an hour. Norway won and progressed to the semi-final. Cue big celebrations and waving of flags from the Vikings. Our section of the crowd were all exhausted late-bookers so were more subdued and had taken the opportunity for a snooze. Our £35 tickets were for 10:00 to 12:30 but the game finished at 11:30 and we were released into the Olympic Park.
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| Mistress Trotty from the cheap seats |
It was bit like being in a Theme Park without any rides but it was very cheerful and there were some very nice flowers. We found a big screen and watched the Triathlon, the Dancing Horses and later the Track Cycling. It should seem odd standing and singing the National Anthem in front of a big screen when Sir Chris was given his medal. However, in our defence, we were only a stones throw from the Velodrome and we almost got tickets!
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| Velodrome - outside favourite |
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| The Orbit |
We were fortunate to have tickets to the Athletics at the Paralympics. We only bought them as a back-up in case our efforts to get Olympic Tickets failed. It was a brilliant day out and a privilege to see the supposedly less able perform with great skill and endurance. The pleasure and reward they derived from achieving in front of a massive capacity crowd was obvious.
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| TW at the Paralympics waiting to go into the Stadium |
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| A full house for 'Thrilling Thursday' |
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| Cockcroft wins! |
