Yes, it’s 100 days to go until the 2012 Olympics open in London. The Olympics have completely divided Britain into people (mostly the ones from London) who are absolutely thrilled and excited and can’t wait, and the people (mainly from everywhere else) who are fed up of hearing about it, especially when it won’t benefit them, and are fed up with the focus always being on London.
Personally, I feel like I’m one of not many people who is in the middle. I mean, I’m not screaming my excitement from the rooftops or anything, because I’m honestly not that excited. I’ll watch the events I’m interested in on TV, and it’ll be good to see what they come up with for the opening and closing ceremonies, but I’m not particularly interested in it. I’m not much of a sporty person and London is hundreds of miles from me, so I’m really quite indifferent to it. However, I’m not incredibly opposed to it like a lot of people seem to be.
Yes, we’ve heard a lot about it on TV, and it can get a little tiring of having people enthusing about how wonderful London is all the time – but let’s face it, the modern Olympics have only been held in London twice before. The events aren’t ONLY taking place in London, although it might seem like there are, and the vast majority are being held there – there are events happening all over the country – but, it does seem a bit like a “let’s pay attention to London and throw money at it, even if it means neglecting the rest of Britain” thing, so some of the anger is understandable.
The thing I hate the most is this very British way of being miserable about everything. You don’t have to hate everything – British people are allowed to enjoy themselves occasionally, and we are allowed to get excited about things. A lot of it seems to be jumping on the bandwagon – it’s suddenly cool to be annoyed about the Olympics, because apparently it shows solidarity amongst all the places that don’t have events taking place. It doesn’t really – it just makes you look a bit stupid really, because it’s so bloody obvious that you only dislike it because lots of other people do too.
Personally, you wouldn’t get me into London for those two weeks for love nor money, because of the massive terrorism risk. I hope that nothing will go wrong because it doesn’t bear thinking about, but it just seems like such a big risk – all those people gathered together is an accident waiting to happen. There’s also the problem with the fact that there’ll be so much traffic disruption, the whole “will the underground cope?” debate (judging on what I’ve seen of it on a normal day at rush hour, my guess is that no, it won’t) and the tickets were so overpriced that there’d be no reason for me to go to London as I don’t have tickets anyway!
I’d rather be at home, where it’ll be busy (such is the side effect of living in a busy holiday area) but hopefully, not as busy as usual – I’m hoping many people will opt to stay at home for a couple of weeks and watch the Olympics, or that they’ve got tickets and will be in London, so we might get a couple of weeks of peace and quiet during what is usually our busiest time. That way, there’s no insane queuing, no travelling to be done, hopefully nice weather to enjoy and, if I want, I can watch the games on TV, but I won’t be having it shoved in my face all the time like I would be in London.
But, in short, if you’re sick of the Olympics by now, just ignore everything to do with it! No-one’s forcing you to read about it in the newspapers or buy merchandise or watch TV programmes about it – you can switch over or not read it or not buy the stuff. Some people really do need to realize that they are their own person – rather than expecting the rest of the world to tiptoe around them, maybe they should look out for themselves, stop blaming the TV or the LOCOG or anyone else and realize that, if you don’t want the Olympics being shoved in your face, the onus is on you to avoid it. This is, I think, a good thing for Britain (morally, in any event… financially, it remains to be seen!), and surely that is worth a few months of a few whingers having to change their lives slightly to make it a bit more comfortable to them.
the life of a moomin 