London2012 Olympics – Page 2 – Debbie Young's Writing Life

Putting the Great Back into Britain

Posted on September 3, 2012March 9, 2013 by Debbie Young

Back in the spring, with the calendar dominated by the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London 2012 Olympics, I expected our lives would feel a little empty, come September. What on earth could we look forward to after all that summer treasure: diamonds, gold, silver and bronze?

Yet with the Autumn Term upon us, I’m still remarkably buoyed up by all the excitement. The Olympics have left us a wealth of unexpected legacies, quite apart from the planned regeneration of East London. Here are some of the things that the Young household has gained. My nine-year-old daughter Laura’s points first:

A greater awareness of the world beyond the Cotwolds, its many countries, nationalities and ethnic diversity
An encyclopaedic knowledge of these country’s national flags
A keen interest in – and mostly, but not always, the ability to spell – numerous sports that she’d never heard of before this summer
An awareness of history being made all around her – she’ll have plenty of memories to share with her grandchildren, beginning every story with “I was there when…”

This is what I have gained from the London 2012 Olympics:

The totally new experience of wanting to read a newspaper backwards rather than forwards. Previously the most use I’ve had for the sports section has been to line the cat litter tray.
A huge sense of relief that our beautiful national flag has been redeemed from dodgy punk rockers and right wing fanatics, to be flourished now with unremitting pride.
A renewed respect for the Royal Family. If that fabulous double act by the Queen and James Bond doesn’t soften the hearts of the hardest Republican, then nothing ever will.
A passionate longing to have one of those long-legged swimsuits that triathletes wear – and the figure to go with it. Watch my personal space – I’ll be taking up less of it from now on.
A genuine conviction that the main role of British athletes at international sporting events is not to provide comic relief, but to win medals and inspire generations to come with their talent, dedication and single-mindedness.

Even my husband, a proud Scottish republican, gained from this summer’s outpouring of British pride: so that Laura and I could enjoy the festivities unrestrained, we gave him free rein to go off and climb Scottish mountains all summer, Munro-bagging, as it’s known north of the border.

I know I’ve always been a bit of a Pollyanna, ever able to irritate gloomy friends with my “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” attitude. But now I’m sure there’s a much broader optimism afoot – a national conviction, in fact. We may no longer rule the waves, but boy, do we know how to make them. It’s been a truly Great British summer. I’ve forgotten and forgiven the rain.

This post was written for the Tetbury Advertiser (September 2012 edition).

If you liked this post and want to make the Olympics last a little longer, you might like to read some of my other posts about the Olympics:

Which New Olympic Sport Would You Choose?

The Olympic Spirit Meets Britannia

Sharing the Olympic Glory – or How I Learned to Love the London2012 Logo

Uncategorized

Which New Olympic Sport Would You Choose?

Posted on August 11, 2012August 9, 2012 by Debbie Young

Is it an urban myth, or does the host nation really get to nominate a new sport to be added to the Olympic agenda?

If it’s true, it would explain how, over the years, the Modern Olympic Games have evolved from a handful of events (just nine in 1896) into an extensive array requiring vast purpose-built facilities and a budget capable of crushing a national economy.

Arvid Spångberg winning the bronze medal. — Arvid Spångberg winning the bronze medal at the 1908 Olympics for levitation.

It must be tempting for the host country to designate a sport at which it, but preferably no other, excels. Next time the USA plays host, surely their choice must be baseball, whose so-called World Series extends no further afield than Canada. But they should take heed: if the need arises, Team GB could send in a crack squad, trained on its school playing fields in the primary school summer favourite game of rounders. After all, what is rounders, except baseball without the fancy dress, annoying hats and hot dogs?

The unsuccessful Paris 2012 bid team must have mourned their missed opportunity to nominate boules. But if they had, we could have sent in, white-suited, the elderly of England, fresh from the bowling greens on which they while away a pleasurable retirement in between tea and cucumber sandwiches. A force to be reckoned with, indeed. Just remember Sir Francis Drake: called away from playing bowls at Plymouth Hoe, he dashed straight off to defeat the Spanish Armada.

Should the Olympics sojourn on Caribbean shores, we might all have to limber up for limbo. But what could be more British than bending over backwards, accommodating whatever life throws at us, without really wanting to make a fuss?

On tenterhooks, I’m waiting to see which sport Britain will add. I’m hoping for a tea-drinking marathon. With the amount of daily training that I put in, I think I could carry off the gold.

If, like me, you don’t want the London 2012 Olympics to end, you can relive some of the fun that they’ve brought us by reading my other Olympics-inspired blog posts:

In A Lather Over My Olympic Shampoo

The Olympic Spirit Meets Britannia

Sharing The Olympic Glory – or How I Learned to Love The London2012 Logo

What Makes An Activity An Olympic Sport?

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What Makes An Activity An Olympic Sport?

Posted on August 9, 2012August 10, 2012 by Debbie Young

Towards the end of last term, my nine-year-old daughter Laura’s class topic culminated in a five-week long homework to write a comprehensive guide to the sport of each child’s choosing. This imaginative assignment encouraged every child to step outside of the normal school sports curriculum and take ownership of one discipline with which they felt a particular affinity. Their chosen sport didn’t even have to be an Olympic one.

“Seb thinks he might do car rallying,” Laura reports. “That’s no surprise.”

Pre-parenthood, Seb’s parents were seasoned and accomplished ralliers who have now segued, interestingly, into running a taxi firm. (I guess there’s no need to worry about missing your flight when they’re booked to take you to the airport.)

“Alexis thinks she might do air hockey.”

I try not to look askance, but Laura spots my raised eyebrows.

“Miss Hawker says it counts as a sport.”

What Miss Hawker says, goes. (Unlike Mummy.)

English: Commemorative stamp of Greece, The Fi... — Commemorating the original Olympic spirit with a Greek stamp for the Athens 1896 games

I reign in my cynicism when I remember my own predilection for a similar game at which I am pretty damn good: table football. Though more likely to be found in a bar-room than an Olympic stadium, this sport can work in perfect tandem with the Olympic spirit of uniting nations through athletic endeavour. I once enjoyed an excellent impromptu international tournament in an Amsterdam bar. My husband and I took on a crowd of youths of indeterminate nationality, who at first glance I had judged to be a bunch of louts. I can’t remember who won, but we ended the last match with smiles, handshakes and a new sense of international fellowship, despite not sharing a common language.

Laura sticks with a more traditional sport for her homework and in no time at all is an authority on the javelin. But my dubious attitude has rubbed off on her.

“Why is THAT a sport?” she queries scathingly as we catch a few minutes of an Olympic shooting competition on the television.

I try to subdue my abhorrence of guns to make a convincing case.

“Why is horseriding a sport?” she asks next. “Surely it’s the horse that’s doing all the work? The person just sits there. And what about sailing? Why do they let sailing into the Olympics?”

Horses are beyond the realm of my experience, but with sailing I’m on safer ground, remembering the aching arm muscles, bruised thighs and blistered hands of our pre-baby sailing holidays.

Laura’s questioning prompts me to ponder what exactly turns an activity into a sport, as does the popular joke already wearing thin that the British are best at sports that involve sitting down. (Thanks, Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah, for putting the cynics in their place.) I come up with some defining British activities in which success could easily be interpreted as an athletic achievement:

Running for a bus – with handicap points given in inverse proportion to the number of shopping bags that you are carrying
Queuing – a subtle endurance sport, for example at the supermarket, strategically timed tannoy announcements can be enough to make the strongest competitor crumple
Irony – surely the mental strain of Ironyman and Ironywoman contests would earn Team GB accolades from around the world: we don’t need gold medals to prove the British are undisputed masters of irony

For the first time in my life, I think I could be an Olympic contender.

(Photo credits: Wikipedia)

Here are my other posts inspired by our fabulous London2012 Olympics:

In A Lather Over My Olympic Shampoo

The Olympic Spirit Meets Britannia

Sharing the Olympic Glory – or How I Learned to Love the London2012 Logo

Travel

Sharing the Olympic Glory – or How I Learned to Love the London 2012 Logo

Posted on August 5, 2012August 5, 2012 by Debbie Young

“Mummy, which sport would you have done if you were in the Olympics a few years ago?”

My nine-year-old daughter Laura has much more faith in my athletic history than it deserves. At secondary school, the kindest comment on the PE section of my school report came from Miss Yardley: “Deborah needs to have more confidence in her ability”. That was before I discovered that careful manipulation of my school timetable would allow me to skip PE lessons entirely.

But then I remember one brief moment of glory when a timely growth spurt ensured that my legs were the optimum length for the hurdles. My stride was the perfect length to enable me to soar over them without knocking any down. Miss Yardley was as amazed as I was.

“Hurdles,” I tell Laura confidently. “Hurdles were wonderful. They made me feel like I could fly.”

“And what else?”

Stumped, I quickly think back to this term’s homework, which has been dominated by the whole school’s study of the Olympics.

“Pole-vault,” I decide. “Or high jump. Because I’d be airborne then too.”

I’m beginning to enjoy this pleasant fantasy.

“But what about the triple-jump?” she suggests brightly.

Laura is the Olympic expert in our house, able to reel off with ease the full list of sporting events and to name many record-breaking athletes too.

“Yes, triple-jump would do it too.”

She goes back to arranging her cuddly toys of London 2012 mascots, Mandeville and Wenlock, in her doll’s deckchair.

When these mascots first came out, I thought they were hideous. But on Friday I caved in and allowed her to buy them with her pocket money, the toyshop having just reduced them to half-price. She hugs them to her ecstatically on the way home in the car.

“I’m so glad I’ve got them!” she beams. “They’ll always be extra special now because I bought them on the day of the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony!”

I feel like a heel and a killjoy for not endorsing them earlier.

It’s not that I don’t love the Olympic movement. I’ve already bought the London 2012 Olympic Top Trumps (UK and International editions) and an official Olympics t-shirt to Laura to wear in our village’s 5k Fun Run (wonderfully led, I hasten to add, by the former GB Olympic runner Nick Rose). I even acquired a badge of the dubious 2012 logo for my collection of enamel pins.

I took Laura to see the Olympic torch relay the day before her birthday and organised her birthday party on an Olympic theme (Hawkesbury 2012 – please don’t sue me, LOCOG!) These Birthday Olympics, which thankfully coincided with a heatwave, included less than authentic sporting events such as the Carry A Cup Of Water On Your Head Race. The birthday tea consisted entirely of circular food to reflect the Olympic rings. Each child represented a country and was a flag carrier for that country in the opening ceremony (a route-march around the perimeter of our lawn).

To avoid squabbles over who would represent GB, I instructed Laura beforehand to choose the ten prettiest national flags, and these were the countries that we used. She’d only heard of two of those countries (and there was at least one that I hadn’t heard of, either), so it was a good geography lesson too.

Consequently, as we watch the London 2012 opening ceremony on television, Laura is looking out for her friends’ countries.

“Oh, there goes Molly…. that one was Lily’s country. Hello, Alexis!”

Wenlock and Mandeville are still lounging about our coffee table as we fill it with popcorn and cold drinks to fuel us through the whole ceremony. I wonder whether Laura will stay the course.

But to my surprise and satisfaction, we both enjoy it enormously, right to the bitter end (yes, I’m talking about you, Sir Paul). As the stadium finally begins to empty well after midnight, my face is still wet with the tears that flowed as the many touches of genius emerged: the 7 billion strips of paper dropped to represent every occupant of this earth; the striking up of Bowie’s “Heroes” as the British squad entered the arena; the appearance of Mohammed Ali to help carry the Olympic flag; the unexpected and perfect selection of young hopefuls to light that beautiful cauldron – to name but a few of the many, many highlights.

By next morning, in my eyes at least, the London 2012 logo has morphed into a thing of great beauty and I don my enamel badge with pride.

My other blog posts on the Olympic theme:

The Olympic Spirit Meets Britannia

In A Lather Over My Olympic Shampoo

Writing

The Olympic Spirit Meets Britannia

Posted on July 5, 2012March 9, 2013 by Debbie Young

Laura waits patiently for the Olympic torchbearer, Union flag at the ready — “Is here nearly here yet?”

With the opening ceremony of London 2012 nearly upon us, I have to say that I’m entirely happy with my experience of the Games to date: watching the Olympic Torch pass by.

I didn’t want to miss the opportunity for my daughter Laura to see a piece of history in the making. About to turn nine the next day, she would remember the event for the rest of her life. It would also be the perfect overture to her birthday party, the theme of which was to be the Olympic Games (albeit our games largely featuring the garden hosepipe, making the most of the fleeting heatwave).The timing couldn’t have been better.

And so after school on the Tuesday afternoon, we shot off down the A46 to park near my brother and sister’s houses, a stone’s throw from the Bath to Bristol road. I’d have preferred to see the Torch crossing the Clifton Suspension Bridge, enabling us to segue neatly from Laura’s current school topic (Brunel) to the next one (The Olympic Games) but it would have meant missing a morning of school.

We strolled down to the Torch route at 5 o’clock and the sun was scorching. We quickly claimed a piece of (hot) pavement from which we could enjoy an unimpeded view and sat down to see what would happen next.

We weren’t really sure what to expect, but somehow I thought there’d be something to imbue us with the Olympic spirit, inspiring us to strive “faster, higher, stronger”. I thought there would be an international vibe to the proceedings, in preparation for so many nations coming together.

Laura and Tim wait for first glimpse of the Olympic torchbearer — “I think I can see him!”

I thought to myself, if this was America, there’d be marching bands with drum majorettes and baton twirlers, military precision and grandeur and pomp and show. If it was China, there’d be military might and vast crowds of synchronised dancers in colourful costumes.

But this was Britain, and what unfolded was an endearingly British spectacle. Here was the general public at its whimsical British best, turning pink in the hot sun without sunhats or sunblock, tucking into Mr Whippy’s 99s and making their own entertainment.

Several small children had brought along their own Olympic Torches, home-made in the best Blue Peter tradition, all sticky backed plastic and kitchen tinfoil. Many waved Union flags, dusted off from last year’s Royal Wedding and being given a preliminary airing in preparation for the Royal Jubilee. With a wry flourish, my brother produced a free promotional flag that he’d been given by a building company at the height of last year’s Will-and-Kate mania. The building company had since gone bust.

Amiable security guards, armed only with dayglo yellow waistcoats and walkie talkies, ambled about the crowds, trying to look busy to justify their temp agency fee. They were clearly at a bit of a loose end. One of them, with spectacular dreadlocks, suddenly seized a home-made Olympic torch from a child and started to run along the route, waving at the spectators as if he were the official torch bearer. A Mexican wave of cheers followed him. Then a couple of cyclists, having jumped the road blocks, pedalled cheerfully along the centre of the cleared street to further applause.

Official Olympic bus followed by torchbearer — AT LAST!

Finally it was time for the real thing, heralded by pairs of police cars driving slowly and officiously along. But their windows were wound right down and the policemen inside were relaxed and smiling, proffering royal waves. Then came the sponsors’ open-topped buses, understaffed, a few souls in garish uniforms looking slightly embarrassed as they waved to the crowds. But the crowds didn’t care: they just let out a rousing cheer.

At last along came the Olympic bus (but it didn’t appear to be faster, stronger or higher). Jogging behind, holding the Torch aloft, was an elderly white-bearded sage. He looked as if he’d just come down from Mount Olympus. He waved and saluted as he trotted along, clearly savouring every moment of his three hundred metres of fame. The crowd went wild.

Olympic torchbearer passes by — Famous for 300 metres

And then he’d passed by and it was over. We all dispersed quickly and quietly, ripples of innocent pleasure radiating out through suburban streets. There wasn’t a hint of trouble. We’d all got more than we bargained for: a bit of a laugh, some unscheduled sunshine, a Mr Whippy and some community bonding.

I came home very glad to be British.

This post originally appeared in the Tetbury Advertiser, July 2012 edition.

If you liked this post about the London 2012 Olympics, you might also enjoy In A Lather Over My Olympic Shampoo