a weekend at home

We'd sort of agreed that this would be a quiet, stay at home kind of weekend rather than gadding about. It's probably at least 6-7 weeks since we spent the whole time at home and it means a few things can get done around the place.

I realise this means the highlight is more likely to be the delivery of the Ocado groceries than, say, a trip in a cable car, but you should see that organic broccoli.

So it's become an opportunity to watch some of the uplifting Paralympics on telly and be quietly pleased that the coverage has maintained a good quality, albeit with fewer channels now it has moved to Channel 4. Kudos to whoever came up with that canal-boat C4 ident that flows to a view of the stadium.

Like many, I'm not familiar with all the special classifications used and there's some more noticeable differences in the speeds among athletes, but it's still exciting to watch.

The challenge now will be to find a way to bottle the positivity created from both the Olympics and Paralympics and to keep the sentiments flowing forward as we hit September and more normal news returns.

I notice the progressive creep of the pink and blue

I mentioned the pink and blue makeover for London in an earlier post and here's a quick example of it.

Its mainly the new signage that has been turning up in different parts of the central area. Train stations have big extra signs showing the way to key exits and there's been a progressive addition of large scale plastic pop-up signage along some of what will become the key pedestrian routes. A few of the signs are quite hand-wringing in their comment that traffic and access could be quite difficult and to plan alternative routes.

Even as pedestrians we are also getting some areas blocked off, like the whole of the access to St James Park and the Mall. It has been curtained off with steel mesh and consequent black signs showing alternative longer walk-arounds.

I've also started to spot the blue and pink cars with the Olympic logos. I gather that BMW has supplied 4,000 vehicles to ferry VIPs around between the events in the special lanes that are being created. I wonder if there will be a pecking order between the different cars on offer?

It looks as if there's some route testing occurring at the moment, so that the drivers won't get lost in their specially created outside lanes.

at the top of the dial

London's preparations for the various upcoming events continue. Yesterday I was around Waterloo and noticed quite a few people in demonstrable finery (morning suits, top hats, ladies in fine frocks and big hats).

Of course, they were on their way to the races - I suspect that some will not return in quite such composed conditions.

That event neatly precedes the Wimbledon season and then the home stretch towards the Olympics, with the parallel Cultural Olympiad festivities also kicking off right now.

Yesterday's Metro and Stannit both had wrap-around adverts from British Airways saying "don't fly" - which did make me smile. The premise is to stay in London and support the teams during the games.

The trick with all of this will be to figure out how to do it without turning into a tourist. London is a great capital, but there's a need to be careful and not get sucked into the mainstream tourist vortex.

I'll confess this happened to me briefly a few weeks ago, when we'd selected to go to a particular show which turned out to be truly awful. I don't recollect blogging about it at the time. It was not one of my finest decisions and we decided to leave after about 20 minutes.

It's that dilemma about having booked to see a show and then not liking it. Do you stay because you've paid or leave to get the time back? We left and decided that the show in question was a crass money spinner designed to extract cash from the gullible (oops).

So I'm hoping that there are not too many of those type of events in the run up to what will be a peak number of visitors to the capital.

Like many tourist rich cities, there's a sort of two tier economy between those that work and live in the centre vs those that are on a short vacation. I'm equally aware of this when I'm in other countries and don't have time to tune into the right frequencies.

So I guess I'll be just slightly more alert as the city gets remodelled for the next few weeks.

Olympic Tickets and 9 Zones of travel

It's still some way off, but I have already received some tickets. I suppose I will have to pay proper attention to the travel advisories now.

The 9 zone Travelcard is a thoughtful touch. To be honest I didn't realise there was a Zone 9. I sort of thought it stopped around 6. Maybe it's because I'm an Oyster card user.

day of the mascot

I can't help thinking of that old, but excellent, PC game "Day of the Tentacle" when I see that new Olympic Mascot...

It's probably just me, though...