Exactly a year to go

BBC Breakfast was broadcast from the main Olympic site this morning. A lot of it was inside the aquatic centre, which looks wonderful. The reason? It’s exactly one year before the opening ceremony in 2012.

Tom Daly (Olympic diver) is going to be the first person to dive off the high board. This is such big news that the BBC will be going live so we don’t miss it.

There’s a lot of argy bargy going on about the transport links coping with the Olympics. Dedicated lanes are being disputed, there has been worries about the tube and buses coping, and so it goes. However, I maintain that it couldn’t get much worse than it already is.

This morning (before the dawn chorus) I hopped on the 05:56 train to Waterloo to get to the flat. I know I generally have a go at South West Trains but this, being the first train of the day, was an excellent trip.

A highpoint was the fact that the guard doesn’t constantly rattle on with over-loud announcements about short platforms, his/her location and what to do if confronted by a turnip. In fact, when he came through the train to check tickets, he entered our carriage and almost whispered “Good morning, folks” and then inspected the proffered tickets. Given that the majority of passengers were asleep, this was amazingly considerate.

Even more incredible is the amount of sad faced, sleepy businessmen that catch this early train. One expects tradesmen and railway workers but, as Mirinda says, clearly there’s a lot of people paying private school fees, forced to work very long hours to make ends meet!

At Waterloo I went down to the Jubilee line and ran head long into a giant queue. Apparently engineering work ran over time and there were delays. I wonder how this will be avoided during the Olympics? I ask this because the Jubilee line goes to Stratford, where Olympic Park lives.

After a wait of about 10 minutes, a crowded train pulled in and the queue moved forward as people squeezed onto the train. Then the doors closed and it pulled out of the station. I was still in the queue, surrounded by annoying people with their noisy earplugs, playing a ghastly variety of tinny music.

I managed to squeeze into the next train, one minute later. And I arrived at the flat at 7:30, hoping that Parcelforce hadn’t tried to deliver in the previous half hour. I had no way of knowing whether they had so was just hopeful.

My first job was to fix wheels to the coffee table. This took about five minutes, although it’s not quite finished as I need to buy some filler. I’ll finish this off next week.

My second job was to clean the windows. Having a balcony makes it easy enough for the sliding glass door in the lounge but the bedroom is another matter. Mirinda assured me the window would spin around, top to bottom. It took me a while to work out how to do it but once I did, it just turned completely. Amazing technology, though I did feel a bit wary about the window just falling out of the frame.

In all, cleaning the windows took about half an hour. There was no third job so I just watched rubbish TV, wrote my blog, played around with my new camera and waited for the delivery.

I think I’ve said before that Mirinda keeps her Phoenix hat on top of the TV and it makes everyone look like they’re wearing it. Well here’s Claire Balding wearing it:

Claire Balding at the new Olympic Aquatic Centre wearing Mirinda's cowboy hat

I have to say there’s some rubbish on TV during the day. I was lucky that the parcel arrived at 2:30pm.

Half an hour later I was out of the flat and on my way home. An hour later I was standing on Waterloo concourse, bemoaning the fact that I’d missed the 3:30 by mere seconds. I may have made it if I’d not stopped off to get a photograph of the latest tall ship docked near the Turkish restaurant.

The Tenacious docked at Canary Wharf

I also stopped briefly at the entrance to the Jubilee line because I liked the slope of the roof and, because I had my camera with me, it seemed silly not to snap away like a demented tourist. To be fair, I wasn’t the only one.

The very modern entrance to the Jubilee Line at Canary Wharf

At Waterloo, I bought a coffee and watched, amazed as a girl walked around in Goth boots that looked like they came straight off Dr Frankenstein’s monster’s feet. They were obviously rubber and had huge holes bored through them in order to make them usable. Or perhaps to act as permanent overflow outlets for when the wearer walks through rivers.

Finally the train arrived and, accompanied by many hundreds of others (including a woman in a Chihuahua print dress pushing a baby stroller with an actual Chihuahua in it) I boarded it eagerly. I was starting to flake a bit but managed to type up this post. I then flaked for the rest of the journey…until a woman hit me with her bag when she left the train at Aldershot. It was probably a good thing or I may have ended up back at Waterloo.