Sushi For Breakfast

We had a change to the routine at work this afternoon, as a bunch of us in my team attended a lecture given in memory of our late Chief Executive, who died a year ago. It was held at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and luckily a colleague volunteered to drive - as we ended up travelling through a few underpasses in Birmingham city centre and down Broad Street, I was quite relieved. The Botanical Gardens were very nice, although we didn't get to see a great deal, it was clear there's plenty to see on a more general visit.

The guest speaker was Karen Darke, winner of a silver medal at the Paralympics in the hand cycling time trial, and was fourth (fractionally behind team-mate Rachel Morris, they crossed the line joining hands & registered the same time) in the H1-3 road race. She talked about her life and career, about mountaineering both before and after she broke her spine, and about getting involved in paracycling and making the team for London 2012. While I didn't get to meet her properly (nor did I get to meet our late CEO's father or sister, nor some of the other people in attendance I would've liked to) I did see her Paralympic medal up close:



It's very heavy! I guess for people like Sarah Storey who won several medals, all the training for their sport gives them the serious neck & shoulder muscles necessary to wear multiple medals at once for more than a minute.

After the talk, we all had tea and cakes (ie coffee, a little sandwich and two little cakes in my case). The plan is for this to be an annual lecture event, and in a bigger venue next year as there were lots of people who really wanted to attend but had prior arrangements. I think today it got off to an excellent start.

The Paralympics is going so awesomely, ParalympicsGB currently in a good second place (behind China, naturally) with 22 golds, 29 silvers, and 23 bronze medals. TV coverage is on Channel 4 rather than BBC, and while I'm still not completely happy (no coverage of rowing, archery, sailing amongst others) the commentators don't witter on inanely like many of them did during the Olympics.

If you're in one of those countries whose Paralympics coverage is so failtastic it could be in danger of compromising future Games bids (you know who, the same country whose Navy I had to prod on Twitter cos they hadn't congratulated their double medallist, a wounded veteran who was regarded by many as one of the Navy's best ever swimmers), you can watch online at www.paralympic.org. Also I've found the Telegraph to be the best online coverage, I've been using their reports to link to a lot on Tumblr.

Unfortunately I'm not going to the Paralympics :( I did have an offer from a friend at work to see wheelchair rugby - this workfriend is the brother-in-law of Mandip Sehmi, one of ParalympicsGB's rugby players - but it was too much to rearrange at short notice, and our department will be half-empty this week as it is. But, a couple of other people (who don't have relatives who are Paralympians) are attending, so I'm looking forward to hearing from them about their Paralympics experiences.

The Olympics are over and I can't bear that thought :'( After two decades of fantastical dreaming and failed bids, two years of a serious campaign to Back The Bid, the unbelievable thrill of the announcement that the 2012 hosts will be "London" followed the next day by the unbelievable horror of the terrorist attacks in London, the pulling together, the seven years of working towards the Games, then sixteen days of magic. I'm so glad the Paralympics happen in a few week's time, that London 2012 isn't over, it's really only half-way through. And while I'm sad that I never got to be a GamesMaker (my dream job, ever since I was 11 and watched the Los Angeles Olympics) I'm so glad I got to go to the Olympics twice - for the opening ceremony rehearsal and the weightlifting, two different venues including the Olympic stadium. And I have a huge stash of souvenirs, including 12 T-shirts (the oldest bought 2 years ago), pins, stationery, and supporters scarves. It would be nice to think that things won't quite go back to the normal we had before, that this has changed things, especially when there was almost constant doom-mongering right up until a week ago that it would be dreadful, or the transport system would fail, or Team GB wouldn't do well (Ha! But whether we'll reach the heights of 29 golds again is another question). I'm so glad it was so wonderful.

Well it seems Team GB can't stop winning medals, we're now up to 22. Instead of writing up summaries here I'm adding pics of all medallists to my Tumblr - http://124daisies.tumblr.com.

It hasn't all gone our way, of course - there have been a few where Team GB had been favourites and either not quite got there, or missed by a mile. It's been a bit sad too that Australia haven't had the Olympics they usually do, they've just got a third gold with Anna Meares beating Victoria Pendleton.

I'm thinking of writing up a summary at the end for DW/LJ. But it's been so nice to have a few experiences of hearing vast crowds sing along with the national anthem during the medal ceremonies, I remember when Cathy Freeman won gold in Sydney and everyone sang Advance Australia Fair so loudly & proudly, I wondered if that would ever happen in Britain.

This was supposed to be a post about all the medals we've won so far, now that we've won yet another gold medal today. But absolutely nobody has a list anywhere with dates, events, etc on so to make the post I want, I'd have to write an essay's worth of notes. This is completely unacceptable, the BBC may be good at providing online TV for these games but their written word coverage is very poor. There's no excuse for this, they've done well in the past, but now it seems absolutely nobody is interested in the written word or in filing things efficiently. Perhaps I'll post about our medals after Christmas when I get my London 2012 annual.

Seven years ago, when London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, we all had cake at work to celebrate. Today, we had a staff lunch and Olympics quiz to celebrate the opening of the 2012 Olympics.

The quiz was organised by our Events team, with teams named after past and present Olympians and team members assigned by a draw. I was in Team Jessica (named after Jessica Ennis), my fellow teammembers nominated me as captain. And we won! It's always assumed that I know everything about the Olympics - which is not true at all, I do know lots but there were more than a few questions I got wrong. But we did get lots right, and we did do OK in some of the Wii 100m rounds thanks to a teammate who gave some expert training advice. I also found out that this teammate's brother-in-law is a member of the wheelchair rugby team, & he was at the Paralympics closing ceremony in Beijing.

For winning, we were all awarded a Cadburys gold medal, and a little gift - mine was Olympics socks, others won giant pens with Union Jacks on them. We were all given the afternoon off (except the IT company who are spending the afternoon fiddling with the servers) so I made a stop at Sainsburys for pizza, J2O, and more Olympics souvenirs - a mug, more Cadburys, and two more Lego minifigures. I now have two tennis players (the Murray brothers), a 21st century Robin Hood, and a medallion man in his underpants in minifigures. I'm thinking after the Olympics I might give them to my sister so she can put them away for when my niece is old enough for minifigures.

Additionally, late last night I was retweeted by John Prescott! He was having one of his usual hashtag-linked twitterfests, this time at the expense of Mitt Romney. Romney is in the UK and will be attending the Opening Ceremony, which made me laugh having seen the content - specifically, something pertaining to the NHS & real nurses, as the news coverage has termed it so as not to give away spoilers. You can see the twitter conversation here, it's also by far the most retweets I've had. I feel like I've had a micro-second of being twitter-famous.

And, I repeat - the Opening Ceremony tonight - do not miss it. It will be absolutely stunning. It's so wonderful to see the coverage so far of the Olympics, and how upbeat almost everyone is, so glad the athletes are loving the Olympic Village and overseas visitors are having a good time. I hope the next sixteen days go well.

It's only 30 days to the Olympics. That's 30 days until the opening ceremony on the Friday evening, the early rounds of the football start in 28 days.

WHOA. It's getting exciting and bizarre and unreal and all-too-real. Because I'm so close to one of the football venues I might have to look into travel timings & so on, I mean when there were hordes of people going to the stadium for concerts it was a pain but it was manageable, I'm hoping it won't be majorly worse than that. I want to be excited about it all.

The latest excitement is that I have claimed my ticket to attend the tech rehearsal of the opening ceremony on the Monday before the Olympics begins! I got this because I applied to be a GamesMaker (ie a volunteer) but I'm on a waitlist, so this is in thanks for applying and sorry we haven't been able to find you a GamesMaker spot yet. It's just for me and I've no idea how good a seat I'll get, plus it will entail spending more money on train tickets and a hotel room for the night, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I hope it all works out OK.

It's so strange to think it's getting so close. It seemed that all through my teenage years the UK was bidding to host the Olympics, and it was becoming a bit of a joke that we kept bidding and never got anywhere. And then we did win, I can still remember the feeling when London was announced as the host. I really hope all goes well and that in time we will have a fabulous Games to look back on.

Day 268 I've had this jacket for a couple of years, but this last week I've started wearing it regularly, I figured I'd never get to enjoy it otherwise.



I bought it a few days before I met the astronauts in September 2008 (along with a new bag and new boots) cos I figured I would need to look cool or smart or whatever. I've hardly worn it since then, but my usual light summer jacket is rather worn so I got it out of the wardrobe. It's more heavyweight than the summer jacket so I couldn't really wear it during my week off as it was too warm, but it's been just right for this past week. Also note this is the only time you'll see it buttoned up, not sure if it buttons up properly around my stomach but there's no hope of it (barring a nasty accident) ever buttoning up across my chest.

And I have completed my application form to be an Olympics volunteer! I'm about 20 minutes walk from one of the non-London venues, so I hope I'll be able to work locally. I've wanted to work at the Olympics since I saw the LA Games in 1984 as an 11-year-old and they had a little feature on Olympic Grandstand about the food and the volunteers working at the food court. I've put about my writing & editing and knowledge management skills, basically my day job, so will have to wait and see what they want. Time off work shouldn't be an issue, in fact I think it's expected that I will be there as I'm known for my love of the Olympics at work.

It is finished. The Beijing Olympics has ended, and Team GB ended it with 47 medals - 19 golds, 13 silvers and 15 bronzes.

The Closing Ceremony was pretty cool, some of the camerawork was a bit off but a good show. And I was desperately searching the crowds of athletes for someone I recognised - Chris Hoy carried the British flag, and the most visible out of all the others was Tom Daley, who had been hoisted onto someone's shoulders and was being passed a succession of cameras to get pictures for everyone.

And the handover has occurred, and thankfully Boris Johnson didn't completely mess things up, even though his suit didn't fit and he was waving at people like he's a five-year-old in a Nativity play. Dad keeps twittering on about how he's a nice chap really, very funny. Yeah, we're all pissing ourselves laughing at work as he announces yet another move to cut affordable housing in London. There's a chance to vote him out before the London Olympics, so let's hope the people of London see sense in time.

But it's our turn now, and we can do this, and it's gonna be awesome. So join us in London on 27th July 2012 for the Games of the XXXth Olympiad.