Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Olympic Update
My first and possibly last Olympic viewing consisted of a Badminton match which we lost to the Chinese. Apparently, we weren't keeping the shuttle flat enough. It's nice that Badminton players get their day in court once every four years. The rest of the time I suppose they just play Badminton. And then we have these expert commentators on Badminton. What do they do the rest of the time? Discuss flat shuttles among themselves I suppose. It's people like these who have swollen the BBC contingent in Beijing to the point where it just slightly outnumbers the People's Liberation Army. Arm and train these guys and we could stop being humiliated at Badminton and turn regime changing into an Olympic event. Oh and I saw a bit of fencing, but we lost that too.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
yes, Badminton. we have the height advantage but it's getting those horses to move around the court...
ReplyDeleteApparently "we won't be able to afford an opening ceremony to rival Beijing's".
ReplyDeleteWhen they say we, do they mean us. We could afford a Jubilee street part style of ceremony, tables in the streets, bunting, women in snoods, perhaps some lemonade, a cake or two. Now that would show up those wealthy Chinese.
What time are the beach volley ball strippers on ?
That's a good idea, Malty. Go easy on the lemonade, though, seeing how much it costs these days.
ReplyDeleteI'm worried about how we'll be able to afford to give out gold medals, too, a shocking expense. A "cool Britannia" solution would be to have an art college design new medals that offered proper value for money, maybe knocked up from discarded lager cans. They could have helpful health and safety information printed on the back, such as what to do about a heart attack while running the 400m men's relay or whether it's a criminal offence "we take very seriously" to wear a turban when pole-vaulting.
Funny post and great comments.
ReplyDeleteSo what if your opening ceremony isn't as lavish as China's? Afterall, China were opening a bloody country (or a least that's how they were treating it); you'll be opening a mere sporting event. Your suggestion, Malty, is spot on.
Love it! I just read this post aloud to my husband, Bryan, and started his day with a laugh. And now I see the comments are even better. God, i love British wit. Brittania will always rule in that way, boys. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteI think we're going to have chocolate inside our gold medals, and we're going to hand them out before people start running and chucking things.
ReplyDeleteTrevor Baylis OBE will be designing the torch so if it goes out in the rain we won't have to ask around for a light.
That just leaves the problem of BoJo...
Fresh out of wit, but why not turn our current impoverishment to the advantage of everybody and scale down the whole bloated structure? Not possible to eliminate the corruption and gladhanding, but surely in 2012 we could put sport at the very centre of how we present the games. As with most of the gestures of this government, the wheel's going around but the hampster's not in it, and my guess is that the group that decide these things are currently handing out the incontinent pants, as they worry about how they can 'top that'.
ReplyDeleteWhy not scale it down, not up - we will never be able to compete with people who sell aborted human foetuses for human consumption (mostly in soup, with a little ginger), so lets get small. Susan B loves our 'British wit'. That Albert Speer opening looked amazing, but spooky - and I didn't notice too much 'fun' on view. Couldn't we make London 2012 the fun games?
If it wasn't for Badminton at the Olympics you wouldn't have written this post and I wouldn't have realised there should be more Badminton in schools. It's great fun and great exercise and I don't see why it can't be played outdoors in all weather. If you've just played or are looking forward to next playing you're unlikely to be stabbing people. And if you are, fencing...
ReplyDelete20.00 hrs update, the yellow devils are now using rent-a-crowd to fill empty seats, stick that in yer book for 2012 Seb baby.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should go one better than the Chinese with their CGI firework footprints and CGI the entire opening ceremony, using the folk who work on Doctor Who. That way we could incorporate a battle between Daleks and Cybermen above the stadium, which would be a lot better than the sub-Millennium Dome tosh with breakdancers that Seb C and pals are no doubt planning to inflict upon us. In fact, we could even CGI the actual games, medals and all. We might actually win something that way.
ReplyDelete