79. Give me an 'L'

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!!!!!!”