London 2012 Olympic Games

Withdrawal symptoms kicking in. Someone get me to Olymipc rehab. Thank god for the Paralympics in a few weeks!

Olympics > NOlympics.

I have loved every single second of London 2012. From the minute the announcement was made that we had won the bid, through the years of build up, watching the stadium take shape every day, the breathtaking Opening Ceremony and being glued to the TV at every available opportunity (so much for house renovations and writing blog posts!) until the final note of the Closing Ceremony. I have cheered, whooped, cried, sobbed and screamed. I have loved every. Single. Second. However, of those seconds, I am able to pick several highlights and a few low points. Read on and I’ll share them with you.

The low points

I want to stay positive, and this isn’t a time for “dislikes”, so by way of constructive criticism, here is where I saw room for improvement to start with so we end it on an utterly positive note.

Athletes, stop apologising! Gold medal? You are AMAZING. Did you win a medal that wasn’t gold? You are AMAZING. You didn’t win a medal? You went to the Olympics and competed on the world stage. You are AMAZING.

Empty seats. Broke my heart. Shame on you giant corporations of the world.

Venom. Once again, football is the cause of national venom. If it inspires so much negativity, why do we continue to support it as a national sport? Cheer up people - we lost - big deal. In other news? Great athletes did great things, regardless of what colour kit they were wearing!

Negativity. Newsnight, couldn’t you just wait a week or two? Whingers of the Square Mile, see, it was fine. Trains worked. Tubes worked. People were happy. We did well. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it you sour faced old farts! Didn't "get" the Opening Ceremony? Read some books, watch some films, listen to some music, learn about your homeland and what makes it great. Didn't like the acts that played in the Closing Cermony? London, and Britain as a whole has been the birthplace of some of the greatest muscial acts of all time. No one is asking to you love them all, just acknowledge that they exist. Also, people are different. They have different taste. One Direction had as much right to be there as Madness. Jessie J represents our music scene just as much as Brian May. The Spice Girls define a generation, just as much as the Beatles. Old or young, new blood or been in the charts for 50 years? Who cares. Enjoy the bits you like and respect that others enjoy different things to you - i.e. BE BRITISH! This is what we stand for, diversity and respect. London did the Olympics proud and you should be proud of London.

And so, on to the stratospherically-high, high points

Attending! I was lucky enough to attend one of the events. I wrote about it for Florence Finds.

The hot pink. London is an oooooooold city. The most colour we get is some red, white and blue on big occasions. Hot pink is probably the most un-London colour there is. It worked! It also kept London neutral, no flag has hot pink in it (or maybe there is one, and I missed it? And if there is I want to become a citizen!) so there could be no accusations of bias!

Wenlock and Mandeville. I don't care what people say. I think they're brilliant. And clearly so do Usain Bolt and Mo Farah.

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The organisation. There were signs everywhere, people everywhere, BoJo on the tannoy giving travel announcements, London commuters helping out tourists with impromptu tour guide skills. Commuting became a surreal and fantastic experience!

BoJo. No other Mayor could have carried the games with such comedy, sarcasm, dance moves and bumble as he. He made me smile! He made me cheer!

Bling. Third in the table? Most medals, ever. Nuff said. But just to clarify, in the words of one of our legendary song writers (yeah, that's right, I think she rocked it with Brian May and did the song, and Freddie proud!) it Ain't about the ba-bling, ba-bling. Wanna make the world dance. We did!

Leftie multicultural crap. Kenneth Branagh reading Shakespeare. Four anthems. One anthem. A world of flags. Mr Bean playing Chariots of Fire. JKR reading Peter Pan. “Mr Bond”, “Your Majesty”, the Welfare State, Sufragettes, immigration, music, tributes, the fact that seven unknown future champions lit the 204 petals so that every competing nation contribued to the lighting of the cauldron. Only in Britain. Danny Boyle you deserve a Knighthood! Aidan Burley, you can jog on.

Homage to g(G)reat British culture, old and new. Muscial legends. Acting legends. Comedy legends. Fashion legends. Dancing legends. Landmark legends. YES, LONDON, YES!!!

The way we were so terribly "British" about everything. Queues, polite responses to international criticism (yes, Romney, I'm looking at you), apologising repeatedly, the stiff upper lip, the "leftie multicultural crap", "we did it right"... no, WE DID IT GREAT! I'm so proud of who and what we are, even if sometimes I feel we should be a bit less British, I'm glad we never will be.

Loosening of the Stiff Upper Lip whilst widening the Thin Blue Line. Those police officers high-fiving tourists and attendees all over East London, one of whom is my hubby. Yeah, our Bobbies rock! They’ve given a lot to make these games happen and despite the stupidly long hours, lack of free time and hard work, I think they’ve truly enjoyed every single minute. And apparently the thugs and criminals of London enjoyed the games too – I’ve not heard a single report of any trouble. Unless of course the PR people are also working overtime to keep it all quiet!

Teamwork, across borders. The way the US runner, and silver medallist, Galen Rupp (I think) whooped for Mo Farah as he crossed the line in the 10,000m final. Apparently they train together, and despite running for different countries you could see how happy he was for his training partner taking gold. Sport unites, it doesn't divide. Footballers and fans of the world - take note!

Inspiration across borders. James, who came in first, asked Pistorious, who came in last, to swap name badges after the 400m heats. Inspirational on so many levels. I cried.

Admiration across borders. This picture says it all

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Breaching protocol. After winning a silver medal in the 20km Race Walk, and the first medal ever for his home country Guatemala, Errick Barrondo decided against the usual handshake and grabbed the guy who gave him his medal, embracing him in an emotional bear hug. So great! They’re knighting him apparently when he gets home. True story!

Commuting. Every tube journey was an emotional high and fun filled. Flags, face paints, comedy announcements, more track suits than a JJB megastore, happy and helpful volunteers and TFL staff and, shock horror, Londoners and commuters actually conversing with strangers on public transport. I genuinely looked forward to my Tube and train journeys every day!

The Royals. The Cambridges and Harry hugging and whooping like commoners? Totes amaze! Zara getting in amongst it with her team mates? Down with the kids! Zara's mum giving her her medal. Too cute! James Bond and Queenie? Speechless...

Presenters. Gabby Logan and Clare Balding showing the dudes how you present a sports programme (with style, humour and lots of layman's terms for us non-sporty types) and pundits forgetting the cameras and screaming for the athletes. Brilliant.

Going to work. My company went Olympics crazy, condensing working hours, celebrating with free drinks and gifting us all chocolate gold medals on Fridays to say thanks for making it in to work. Too cute.

A nation of whingers and complainers SILENCED. I spent months staying positive (despite my usual hatred of public transport) and telling people that London would step up, it would be fine and to stop whinging about congestion and Tube delays. People were actively seeking out issues to complain about until about two days in, when they realised it wouldn’t be tolerated, their usual fellow whingers didn’t join in and quite frankly, no one wanted to hear it. Ha. I didn’t want to say it, but I TOLD YOU SO.

Facial expressions. Jessica Ennis' and Mo Farah's faces as they crossed finish line. Mo Farah's daughter and heavily pregnant wife as they track invaded. Greg Rutherford as he realised what had happend to him. Vicky P with the love heart and the mouthed words. Chris Hoy not holding it together. The Ugandan guy who just grinned at the interviewer. Nicola Adams as she smiled like a Cheshire Cat. Happiness is infectious. I smiled a lot... when I wasn't sobbing of course.

Making history, pushing boundaries. World and Olympic records. “Firsts”. Titles retained. Female boxing. Most decorated athletes. Women in every team. Oscar Pistorius...

That 800m race. Our poor guy would have taken gold in the last three Olympics with his time, but came in last. SuperHumans! Also goes to show - no matter how good you are, you can always be better. Isn't that what the Olympics is all about? Always striving to be bigger, better, faster, stronger? Reality TV z-elebs take note...

Jamaica. Bolt and Blake in the 100m. They went on the B of the Bang. The 1, 2, 3 in the 200m. The skits to camera before they run - how are they so chilled? The press ups. The conga line. Jamaica House. The Mo-Bot as Bolt crossed the line. What a team.

Team spirit. That US sprinter who completed his leg of the relay with a broken limb... So he didn't let his team down? And they qualified. What. A. Legend. He should get a medal for that alone. Actually, the Queen should make him an honorary British citizen so she can give him a knighthood!

Andy Murray, finally! I wanted Federer to win Wimbledon, but a few short weeks later, same people, same place. Different result. Hurrah.

Roger Federer. Always such a gentleman. Always so dapper, so polite, so gracious. I heart.

Montages. A montage always gets me, especially an Olympic one. The music that the BBC use on their montages at the end of each night either makes me dance in my living room or cry. Often both. 

WINNERS! Michael Johnson's quote (referring to Christine Ohurogu) - she didn't lose Gold, she WON silver. There's a difference.  Remember it.

Nicola Adams! How cute is she? How deadly? But really, that smile, that laugh, that jubilation? I want to bottle it and keep it in my handbag so I will never, ever, ever feel down again.

Saturday 4th August 2012. One year on, exactly, from when London's spirit almost crumbled under the riots, London came back and gave us so much to be proud of. #SuperSaturday
 
It happened. Thank you LOCOG, the Gamesmakers, TFL, Danny Boyle, London 2012,Team GB and all the national teams for making these last two weeks some of the best of my life.
 
Inspire a generation. Consider us inspired.

My (crazy) month: June

Where did it go? How is it almost half way through July? Time flies when you’re having fun I suppose. And time also flies when you are the busiest you’ve ever been. I feel like I should do a quick post to explain why I haven’t had much time for blogging recently (aside from the fact that I haven’t had any wifi for the last two weeks) and provide a little catch up. Also, check out my Instagram feed for all the details in picture form.

 
Work went ker-aaaaay-zeeee with several massive events and projects, there were more birthday celebrations than you can shake a stick at and, what was that other thing? Oh yes…

WE MOVED HOUSE!

Well technically we did the actual moving out in May and the actual moving in on the first day of July (with possibly the most painful hangover known to humankind), but June itself was spent living in my parents’ spare room and doing all the house moving admin. I’m not going to sugar coat it. It was HARD. It was frustrating, it was stressful, it was draining and it got uh-ger-ly. But we all survived and came out the other side unscathed. Well most of us. There was an injury of sorts...

Hmmm

Anyway, enough about the hideous dramas associated with house buying and selling and a bit more about the fun stuff we did in June.

I started the month with two weddings, a thirtieth birthday, an after party and a Diamond Jubilee party. I was pretty chuffed with the outfits I managed to put together, in my homeless state, as well.

Later that same week we celebrated one of my besties, Claire from Wacey Style, getting engaged. Prosecco, canapés and lots of ooooooh-ing and aaaaaah-ing at her beautiful bling. Check out her engagement story here! I was also excited to finally get a partner in the regular "OH! SISTERS!" shot with the Disney Princesses at the Two for Ones as my sister-in-law Kate came along to play.

I treated myself to a well-earned day of rest with a facial and a full body massage and I finally got to sit still for ten minutes with tea, cake, sofa snuggling and made my boy treat me to a thai takeaway. I felt absolutely 0% guilty about my self indulgent laziness! The following week another bestie turned 30 and we had a refined affair with dinner in a local hotspot, The Blue Bridge in Writtle. Sadly, the Beckhams weren’t there that evening. Hmph (and sorry for that link).

I got a little bit excited when the lovely Rebecca posted my review of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal on her blog, Florence Finds. I think three of my friends booked tables after that! I think the restaurant owes Rebecca some commission!

I got my wellies out of storage (what a stroke of luck we could find them!) at the weekend for some field dancing at LOVEBOX in honour of another friend’s 30^th birthday. I had every intention of seeing lots of the acts, but ended up taking pictures of my friend in a giant Hunter welly, sticking a false moustache to my fave and dancing on a stage with a bunch of drag queens in a fake NYC club tent until someone dragged me to see Groove Armada. We also coined our new girls-only-night-out motto of “Drink. Rave. Attack!” I’ll let you work out what that means.

A little tiny bit of downtime followed, only to ramp back up again for a full on weekend to celebrate some more birthdays. Friday afternoon saw copious cocktail consumption at Pearl atthe Chancery Court Hotel on a girly lunch date, Saturday was filled with a big family brunch and a walking tour of the city of Westminster, a spot of lunch and then a Grim Reaper tour in east London, all in honour of my mum’s birthday. Sunday was a day full of cake, bubbles and Barbie cars as we celebrated my beautiful god daughter’s fourth birthday followed by my last family roast dinner before “leaving home” for the second time in my life.

On Thursday 28^th June we finally took ownership of our new home, exactly 6 months to the day after we started our property search and putting our flat on the market. On the Friday Mr G went to collect the keys and went in with a crack team of cleaners (my mum and my mother-in-law) to get it all spick and span for me to swing by after work and check out my new home.

It felt strange, exciting and a bit emotional. I wrote about it.

That night we celebrated with prosecco and macaroons. Of course!

On the last day of June we celebrated yet another 30^th birthday with another bestie, Kim B (we actually are the Essex answer to the Spice Girls you know!) which involved ridiculous amounts of prosecco and bespoke (and at some points, two-for-one) cocktails at The Marylebone. That place is lethal I tell you. After drinking dangerous amounts of cocktails we (apparently, so my camera tells me) made our way to Proud Camden for some dodgy sofa dancing, floor crawling and lots and LOTS of falling over on cobbles, sofas, steps and (mainly me) flat floors.

We shall talk no further on this subject (mainly because I can’t!).

**I know the next two days aren’t technically June but despite my OCD, I’ll tell you about them quickly anyway**

The next day, with THE world’s worst hangover, I held it together just long enough to put on leggings, Uggs (in july!!!), a hoodie and sunnies and project manage both our families moving our entire life back out of storage and various garages and sheds and in to our new home. We said a small thank you and christened Mr G’s spaceship-sized 30th birthday BBQ. Sadly, as we had no bed at this stage, we took ourselves back to our temporary camp site at my parents’ house and collapsed by about 9pm.

Monday saw us move all the final bits and bobs in to the house, build our bed and do a lot of sitting on the floor as various people stopped by to check out the new pad. I left Mr G alone to undertake one last celebratory event with Kim B consisting of Thai green curry and cupcakes before spending our first night alone in our new home.

I want to say “ahhhh bliss”, but really it’s a bit “ahhhhh, mess” right now.

The bliss bit is on its way…

…and i’ll be blogging about every last step!

Ciao ciao June. Hello July!
xoxo

Jubilations!

I’ve mentioned before that I love the Royals, specifically the Queen (and Harry, if we're going to get specific), so you can imagine how excited I was when all the Jubilee plans were announced. I was literally ecstatic about the prospect of heading to London to watch boat pageants, Red Arrow fly pasts, balcony appearances and an array of stars perform in front of/on top of Buckingham Palace.

And then I realised that that was also going to be the busiest wedding/birthday/housewarming weekend EVER and so I wouldn’t be doing any of those things.

But I couldn’t let the opportunity to commemorate 60 years of Queenie in charge pass without some kind of celebration, and really it was only cost effective to get all my décor from the Royal Wedding party back out for another airing – pound per use and all that. So I convinced my parents to let me hold a garden party at their pad (because I was homeless, obviously) for some of our nearest and dearest.

I mentioned in my “what on earth to wear…” post that the dress code on the invites was “icons from the last 60 years” or “your patriotic best”, having seen the effort people went to for the Royal Wedding party with hats, fascinators and fancy frocks galore I was excited to see what people wore.

Although I was impressed that most people went the patriotic route (including those not of British heritage), with a sea of eccentric red, white and blue taking over the garden, a few special mentions for the “icons”outfits can’t be missed. We had a Che Guevara (my cousin), a rugby player from before my time (my dad), ‘Gin and Tonic’ (the lovely Laura) and a modern Cilla Black (the wonderful WaceyStyle stylist – Claire).

I had intended to come as something quirky like Pimm’s (brown dress, various fruit accessories) or ‘strawberries and cream’ (red dress with added yellow pips, a fruity fascinator including a stalk and a leaf and a creamy pashmina), but I ran out of time with all my other events outfits to plan.

I went for a fifties-style blue frock from Lindy Bop onAmazon, with red and white sashes (velvet ribbons from Hobbycraft) and puffed up with one of my bridesmaids’ petticoats, a bouffant beehive hairdo (because I didn’t have time to wash my hair before the guests arrived), topped off with a Union Flag oversized bow (from eBay), and some red and white New Look polka dot wedges. Seeing as I’m quite in to my icons I had a few guests guess that I’d dressed up as Minnie Mouse because of the pouffy skirt and polka dots (one of my icon ideas, but I couldn’t find an un-sl*tty verison of the outfit!), Lady Gaga (I assume because of the bow and the hair) and a rockabilly (because of the vintage style frock and hair). Sadly, it was none of the above, it was just a red, white and blue concoction which was the best I could do in the circumstances!

my patriotic best

Che

Gin and Tonic drinking gin cocktails

 

recreating our pose from the Royal Wedding party

Kate and Wills popped in

 

a sporting hero

Meeting the Queen

Celebrating a newly acquired British citizenship and a "Baby Brit on Board"

Finger on the pulse

Red, white and blue Jubilee Princess!

Brit babes!

some great efforts

Anyway, I got up at 6am to start Operation Jubilee Party and the whole family pitched in to help get afternoon tea ready for our 50 or so guests. We made a great team.

I was on sandwich making and cakes and scones set up duties, my mum was on evening buffet creation, cheese and pineapple flag spearing and mixing up sandwich filling duties, Mr G was on bunting, patriotic pom pom and flag décor duties and then helped my dad out with his occasional table, garden seating and marquee set up duties. Some family members arrived early and took over on the whipping of cream and decanting of jam which was good as it meant I had 30 minutes to spare to get showered, made up and create some kind of outfit before non-family guests arrived…

Patriotic pom poms

Cute vintage bunting...

...and some more traditional flags!

…and from then on it was Pimm’s and real ale on tap (from my newly acquired 12 litre drink dispenser – it was re-filled three times. That’s a lot of Pimm’s - and a barrel of beer on the BBQ), prosecco and English Hedgerow cocktails in vintage tea cups, afternoon tea (including what turned out to be tipsy cocktail cupcakes*), retro party snacks, cheesy British classics (Match of the Day and The Archers theme tunes anyone?) mixed in with some vintage songs and general British garden party activity, ie drinking, eating, chatting, sitting, laughing, “cheers”ing and looking at the sky worrying about rain/being thankful that it’s not raining!

When everyone was truly afternoon tea-d out, we pulled out the chilli, jacket potatoes, salad, cheese board, pizza and quiche and let people get stuck in to the evening buffet with a few more drinks before people started to drift off home, covered in flags and Union Jack regalia!

All in all I feel like we had a rather refined but fun-filled day, garden partying in homage to Queenie’s big day. By 11pm we were mostly tidied up, I was in my pyjamas with a cuppa, I managed to sample some of the leftover food and finally got to sit down and watch some of the Jubilee concert. And I didn’t get out of my pyjamas until Wednesday, when I had to put something more suitable on for work!

Being the hosts and hostesses with the most/mostesses is hard work but jolly good fun, what what, especially after such a fun-packed (i.e. drunken) weekend. Now… you think I can go for a third and fourth outing of the Union Jack décor for the Olympics opening/closing parties?

Even better – by then I might actually have a house to host it in. Fingers crossed…

Royal waves

x

Chillaxing on Tuesday

Look who we found in the Jubilee weekend papers...

*the lovely ladies that made the cute mini cupcakes came rushing up the garden on seeing some of the kids stuffing their faces with the chocolate versions. A quiet word that perhaps the children might like to stick to the chocolate cakes as the others were slightly, erm, alcoholic (Baileys or mojito icing on the vanilla ones and Limoncello in the lemon ones. Oh my deliciousness!) and a potential crisis was averted. Although… a few Baileys cupcakes before bed might have seen a few lie ins for the parents on Tuesday morning… just sayin’ tee hee!