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Thursday 2 August 2012

London during the Olympics

Yesterday, down to London. Ladysolly and I were recruited as babysitters while daughter.1 and husb attended an Olympic event. We left early, as per what all the notices said, and had to stand all the way in to London on the Chiltern Line train because I think we caught the tail end of the rush hour. But once in London - where was everybody?

It was like a ghost town. Taxis were plentiful, traffic was light. The taxi driver said that this had been his experience too. I guess that the combination of all the bad news about queues at Heathrow, the big question mark over the security situation caused by G4S and the general perception that London would be a place to avoid, has led to a situation where the only people going anywhere near London were bicycle racers and volleyball fans, and the usual tourist masses in London have gone elsewhere. And who can blame them?

Daughter.1.husb said that his sister has closed her flower shop for the duration of the Olympics, on account of uncertainties about whether delivery would be possible,

I can't help feeling that when the costs are counted, the Olympics will be a success, but that will be because most of the costs won't be counted. Inspector gadget says that policing is currently very weak anywhere away from the Games, because so many police have been drafted in to London. And the leave situation is dire.

Ladysolly did a great job looking after grandson.1, with some assistance from daughter.2. Later on, daughter.1 and husb got back, daughter.2.boyfriend turned up and we all had a Lebanese takeaway delivered to our door, which was very nice.

2 comments:

  1. Why not daughter[1].husb? :) Or daughter[0].husb, since I suspect this is your first daughter?

    Anyway, it's a real shame that the security nonsense may have driven people away, and more of a shame that that won't be counted by the people responsible. Maybe for the next games rooftop missile launchers will be completely normal and we'll just accept them as something that's been there since... well, probably not since the Greeks, but since we had such things. Meanwhile I imagine that crime is up in other parts of town, not that they'll acknowledge such things.

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  2. Square brackets and counting from zero are too geeky to be used for daughter-enumeration; they wouldn't understand it.

    I expect the greeks had blokes with javelins and discuses poised on top of the temples, just in case.

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