Beach Volleyball 28 July 2012

So far so AMAZING. With London 2012 getting off to a more than spectacular start – thanks to Danny Boyle and the hundreds of volunteers, performers and The Queen herself (!) – I can safely say that I’m in Olympic heaven. Danny is due to get his knighthood, as predicted, Sir Chris Hoy carried the flag for Team GB and Sir Steve Redgrave had his moment with the flame. We were right about youngsters lighting the cauldron, although who could have predicted it would be a group of them? Even the bookmakers William Hill has had to give punters their money back on that bet.

So after staying up waaaaay later than someone with a newborn baby and toddler should ever dare contemplate, we roused ourselves early the next day and headed into town to watch Beach Volleyball at Horse Guards Parade. The location was amazing – totally blew Bondi Beach out of the water, sorry Australia – I could see the London Eye, Whitehall buildings above Winston Churchill’s bunker, the Shard and Big Ben. Buckingham Palace was just behind us and The Mall looked absolutely stunning dressed in Olympic ring flags and Union Jacks.

Benny Hill music blared during intervals of raking, dancers wiggled their beautiful backsides and a couple of funnymen chased each other around the arena for our entertainment. ‘I wanna see you dance!’ shouted the compere. I was up in a flash. Our Olympic baby took it all in his stride and didn’t peep once. (So Katie Hopkins can stick that in her anti-women pipe). At this point, I’d like to thank Lord Coe for his u-turn on babes in arms.

Meanwhile, the city looked wonderful and eerily quiet with hardly any cars flying around the edge of Trafalgar Square. We had a marvelous lunch in a fairly peaceful Soho, and Oxford Street was empty compared with a regular Saturday

John Lewis will be having fun though. The Official London 2012 shop on their flagship store’s 5th floor was heaving with accredited Olympics visitors. They seemed to be spending nicely with baskets of Olympics merchandise filled to bursting. Let’s hope they keep it up!

Now we just have to hope Team GB begin to pull in some medals. So far it’s been our lovely ladies in the cycling and swimming who have come up trumps. That and filling up the seats that the greedy corporates have shamefully wasted. Once that’s happening, we won’t know ourselves as we’ll have nothing to complain about… surely not?!