Madames et Messiuers, bienvenue ...... No hold on a second,
aren’t the 2012 Olympics in London?
Okay, so last night the greatest show on earth – we’re told
(but hold on I can now feel all London commuters rolling their eyes at me),
arrived in London last night. At 9pm – past the watershed (I wasn’t sure
whether to expect nudity or bad language!) the opening ceremony began and the
2012 Olympics commenced.
I thought that overall the ceremony went well. Was it on the
same scale and spectacle as Beijing four years ago? Well no, I can’t say that in
my opinion that I thought it was. Was it uniquely British? Well let me see, it
had Bond, Bean, and as always we rolled out the McCartney to bash out some
Beatle classics. So with the three B’s present, and the Queen and the royals in
attendance; yes – you’d have to say that it was as British as we’ve come to
expect – especially following the recent Jubilee!
However I have to say that as much as I loved the Bond and
Bean segments of the opening ceremony, I did feel that there were certain
things missing. Now I know that this may be slightly controversial given that
the comments on twitter and facebook seem to be glowing with how brilliant the
opening ceremony was – but why did Danny Boyle decide to start our history with
the rise of the industrial revolution?
I appreciate that we’re hosting the Olympics as the United
Kingdom, but I sort of felt that a good 1600, 1700 years of our history – and
by our I don’t just mean England, was written off, forgotten, ignored, swept
under the carpet – you get my gist! I don’t feel any homage was paid to the
history or cultures of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or yes England.
However, everyone with origins in pastures, the black country, or miner towns
must feel well represented.
I reckon that if we made everyone play a game of family
fortunes – with the question being; name one thing most commonly associated
with the United Kingdom? Surely, the top the answer would be the Queen? No, is
this just me? Yet Danny Boyle made no reference to our history of Kings and
Queens. No worries though, as Bevan sleeps soundly as Boyle chose to celebrate
the NHS for a good ten minutes!
Again, back to family fortunes you’d hope that someone would
also answer Shakespeare – no? I’d like to feel that that’s when you’d hear waharah
waharah (where the contestant also wins a mystery prize – probably a trip to
Stratford upon Avon in keeping with their answer you’d guess) but was any
reference made to our literary greats? No. Boyle made no reference to the
phenomenal literary history that we have. Although he did celebrate Lord
Voldemort, and anyone watching at home will have heard the BBC commentators say
JK Rowling was the greatest writer to come out of the UK ever!
This comment however, sort of seems reflective of the whole
opening ceremony. Boyle seemed to concentrate only on the new, or not very old.
The music focused on the past sixty plus years, we celebrated the inventor of
the world wide web, and the medium of social networking. But our history, our
long and industrious history, was ignored.
I feel that with a country as old as ours, we should have
celebrated a whole lot more. If we’re looking at music why couldn’t we have
included bagpipes, to be representative of Scottish heritage? We are the United
Kingdom, and I kind of thought that the opening ceremony would have reflected
the heritage of the whole of the United Kingdom. I wonder how heavily involved the
political correctness police were, and how high the rug stands – where they
managed to sweep the 1700 years of our history!
Finally as you might have guessed from my opening line, I
was a bit confused as to why all the announcements and introductions were being
given in French before English. I can only assume that this is because the
Olympic Committee and Chairman of the Olympic Committee or Committee Olympic is
French. But still – if we’re paying to host the event and we’re hosting the
event, they could at least let us have the announcements in English first!
As I sit on the train writing this blog, in a carriage
filled with passengers here for the Olympics, I know that I should be feeling
happy that we’ve got this amazing event. Yet sat listening to two American
tourists talking about how there is nothing to see in the UK – makes me want to
scream at them and send them back home with Mitt Romney. Yet, what can I
expect? According to Boyle all we once had was pastures and then industrial
cities! Don’t worry about Snowdonia, Stone Henge, Edinburgh Castle and the
Giant’s causeway, to name but a few of the wonderful spectacles that can be
visited!
