Sunday, 24th August, 2008

Just watched the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. All very lovely and, I think anyway, more joyous than the opening ceremony, perhaps because the athletes could relax and enjoy it more.

If there is a heaven and it has television access of reasonable quality I am sure my grandmother will have been checking to see that they had the Union Flag the right way up. In case you are wondering, she worked in a colour loft for decades, first as a machinist, then a cutter and eventually ran the place - the title was charge lady. She always cut really important colours herself right up to the end though I think those skills are now obsolete, I am pretty sure flag making has changed completely. But anyway, she always quite a prickly lady and hanging the flag upside down used to really tick her off! Though she was oddly ambivalent about whether to refer to it as the Union Flag or Union Jack - jacks generally being used on boats. I'm a mine of useless information aren't I?

I notice they also sang several verses of the British national anthem which, I suspect, probably had television commentators around the world thinking 'What? I thought it was just God Save the Queen three or four times with the word Noble shoved in the make words fit the music…… who knew?' heh heh

I thought the double-decker bus bit was clever and the little touch of Greensleeves was cute but isn't that about the first time Beckham's boot has actually touched a football with any decent result since he moved to America?

I did kind of feel a twinge of sympathy for poor Boris looking gloriously disheveled in that particular British way and I wondered if inside his head he was screaming 'How on earth am I going to come up with the money for anything more than the municipal baths for the swimming events and the ping pong table gathering dust at the back of the local youth club?'

Proof that I am married to a grumpy old man. Alan: 'How do you make the air quality in Beijing worse? Explode a few million tons of gunpowder into the air.'