In
January2011 I wrote a piece titled “Discomfited?”. In
it I recalled the one or two times in my life when I have been
embarrassed. I’ve never been so
embarrassed that I wished that I could just disappear. Mostly, they have just been of the, “I didn’t
really say/do/ that did I?” kind of thing.
Yesterday,
however, something happened that could have been (and may still could be)
unbelievably embarrassing. I didn’t do
anything and I certainly didn’t say anything.
Throughout the whole incident I was seated, still and silent. But I blushed deeply and looked around
feeling self-conscious and extremely uncomfortable.
Almost two
years ago Caroline and I applied for Olympic tickets. We knew it was a lottery and as neither of us
have ever been successful in any kind of sweepstake, raffle or game of chance,
and as we had heard that the demand for tickets was going to be huge compared
with the supply available, we applied for as many as we were allowed.
On a Saturday
morning many months ago we each sat with our laptops on our knees and went
through the Olympic calendar making our application. We both applied for two tickets for the same
events.
If we had
been completely successful we would have become the lucky recipients of 80
tickets for twenty events and as we believed that we hadn’t the slightest chance
of success, we applied for quite expensive seats too. Why not?
We might just as well fail to get a £750 pound ticket as a £35 pound
one. After the application had been sent
off I calculated that with a 100% success in our submission, we were looking at
a bill for £24,000.
You probably
won’t be surprised to learn that we were not 100% successful but actually our
rate was around 6%, which we thought was pretty good.
Yesterday we
went to our first event – Beach Volleyball!
As I wrote in
“Calm down!” in February
this year, Caroline becomes wildly excited and enthusiastic very
easily. I can’t begin to imagine what
she must have been like as a kid on Christmas Eve. I doubt that she ever slept at all. She could hardly sleep on Monday night and “We’re
going to the Olympics tomorrow,” was the last thing I heard before I eventually
got to sleep.
On Tuesday
morning she was up very early and packing a rucksack with items that would
cover every possible meteorological event.
No, not snowshoes but if it had been February and not July, they would
be in there too (I’ve still got the
shovel and coarse salt in the boot of my car from the very cold spell in
December 2010).
We went to
London by train and then got a cab from Euston to Horse Guards Parade where the
competition is taking place. On the
train we sat in a ‘Quiet Zone’ carriage.
This means that using mobile/cell phones and personal stereos is
prohibited and even though the carriage was almost full, nobody spoke and it
was eerily quiet.
Quiet that is
until Caroline’s bubbling excitement got the better of her and she suddenly
blurted out, “We’re off to the Olympics.”
Forty people looked up from the books, newspapers and magazines they
were reading and looked at her. A lot of
them smiled and Caroline beamed back happily.
I stared out of the window.
The temporary
stadium at Horse Guards is a wonderful thing.
There is comfortable seating for 15,000 people and there are four lifts
or elevators to get people like me, with mobility problems, to their places. The soldiers on security duty were charming,
funny and helpful while the uniformed volunteer helpers were desperate to be of
assistance.
At 2:30 pm we
were ready for the first game, which was between two men from Venezuela and two
Latvians.
“Who do you
want to win?” Caroline wanted to know.
“I’m not
bothered.”
“I’m
supporting Latvia because that nice waitress at the Cracked Conch in Cayman was
Latvian,” Caroline told me.
You will
almost certainly never have been to a Beach Volleyball event but let me tell
you, it is different. I suppose that
according to my personal definition of a sport – if it can be done while
smoking, drinking or sitting on a chair and it isn’t possible to work up a
sweat, it’s not a sport - then beach volleyball is a sport. But it is absolutely nothing like any
sporting experience that you have ever been to.
The crowd is
encouraged to be noisy and rowdy and if they ever go quiet they are yelled at and
cajoled to shout, stamp their feet or clap in unison. At certain points in the procedure the crowd
is ordered (not asked) to stand up – and unbelievably they all do!
Caroline
joined in everything. She clapped and
she yelled. She shouted, ”Olé,” after the trumpet call and she stamped her feet and hammered
on the advertising board in front of our seats and at set point she stood up
and did everything at once.
The
television cameras were at Horse Guards yesterday and for all I know there was
live coverage at the very time I became seriously embarrassed.
The crowd’s
rendition of, “We will rock you,” had fizzled out. A Latvian was about to serve. Before the MC could exhort us to yell again
like maniacs there was a fleeting moment of peace, quiet and calm.
That was the
moment that Caroline chose, in front of 15,000 people and the world’s press, to
yell at the top of her voice those three little words that I am sure she had
never previously even thought of saying and I am fairly certain she will never
say again, let alone bellow at full volume.
Those three words that were heard all round Whitehall and could possibly
have also been heard in China, Lesotho, Bhutan and Russia:
“COME ON LATVIAAAAAAAA!!!!!!”
