My Thoughts on London 2012 - Subtitled 'I Wasn't There'

Rather late in the day Westfield asked me to get involved in their #IWasThere campaign to coincide with London 2012 – for lots of reasons I won’t go into here I didn’t think I could do it justice, but what it has done is spurred me to get some things off my chest about London 2012. What follows is my own personal London 2012 story – I’m not sure whether this is the kind of thing that Westfield want to hear as part of their rather sunny campaign, or to be honest what you as followers of the blog want to read, but I need to get it off my chest. Here goes…

I’ve hesitated to talk about this given the manic fervour around London 2012, and people like Boris extolling us all to party like its 1999, but I think my final feelings about the Olympics are actually those of regret tinged with a tiny little bit of resentment. Knowing that I would probably be at a loose end when the Olympics came around (I left my last permanent job back in April of this year) and coupled with the fact that I live just a few hundred yards from the Olympic Park, I thought I should make myself useful so applied for both the Mayor of London’s ‘London Ambassadors’ programme and I also went for a ‘Games Maker’ position. Unfortunately my offer of help was declined by both organisations. OK, I thought, there have to be other avenues that I can pursue – I’ve seen other London bloggers getting involved with campaigns being run by the official sponsors, and I’ve run the Londoneer since since 2007, so perhaps I could find some other way to get my foot in the door. I found some public relations and press email addresses and fired off a bunch of emails and then waited, and then waited some more. In the end, all I received in response was an email from one organisation – Samsung – effectively telling me to go away. At that point then my only option was to go along as a spectator, but given my very limited budget I could only justify a very cheap seat – in common with lots of other people I found that none were forthcoming, despite a last ditch attempt at following the popular Twitter account that has been alerting people to last minute availability. So here I am, sitting at home on the night of the closing ceremony having spent the last two weeks as a bystander, maintaining my rictus grin as I’ve had to fight my way past the thousands of ticket holders milling around Stratford so that I can get to places where I’m actually welcome.

Has there been a silver lining? Of course. If you hadn’t realised by now that London was the Earth’s melting pot of races, religions, colours and creeds then the ‘national houses’ were a great reminder. I had a lovely experience at the opening of Nigeria House, just a stone’s throw from the Olympic Park at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Danes were incredibly welcoming at St Katharine Docks down by Tower Bridge, and I got warm smiles (and a free cocktail) when I ventured into Jamaica House inside the renamed O2. I did have a nice evening in the company of friends over at one of the official celebration sites, Victoria Park over in Hackney on one night, although I do recollect that they all had tickets to various events throughout the Olympics… London 2012 has also been responsible for the weirdest statue to ever grace the city’s streets too – the London Booster.

Now I doubt that many readers have the same kind of feelings about the whole affair that I do, although I wouldn’t be too sunny around the residents of the Carpenters Estate next to the Olympic Park if I were you – with some justification, they continue to feel incredibly marginalised. Spare a thought also for the residents of Hackney Wick, that little island of civilisation bordered by the A12 and the canal system, who woke up one morning a few weeks ago to discover that they were inside what was effectively a security cordon.

In a way I’m glad its over – perhaps things can get back to normal around here now and we can all start focusing on the perilous state of our economy again. Perhaps I might even find a job…