London Calling

I am now half way through my Olympic shifts as a volunteer in the Command & Control Centre at Greenwich Park, the home of the Equestrian and Modern Pentathlon events. It has been a long journey to get here, an application in October 2010 followed by an interview in Gateshead in April 2011 and then numerous visits to London to complete the training.The opportunity to attend the opening ceremony dress rehearsal and then have to keep all of it secret for five days was a challenge. Danny Boyle is an absolute genius as well as being completely mad. The sound of those drums and the smell of those chimneys is something I will never forget.Last week, at Greenwich Park, were practice days for the athletes both two legged and four legged (that’s what we call them) and I managed to see Zara Philips practicing on the gallops. I was also recruited to pretend to be a horse and rider in the main arena to allow the Olympic Broadcasting Service to test their cameras and microphones, as well as giving the podium team an opportunity to iron out any problems. I also had to pretend to be a member of the silver medal winning team and stand on the podium and collect a silver medal and flowers (a badge and a piece of broccoli in my case) A few days later Zara would be standing where I had stood, very strange. The cross country has been spectacular, something I had never seen before.Travelling around on the tube and DLR in my purple and red uniform is very strange; people come up and ask you which venue you are at and what you are doing. Very different to the usual routine of avoiding eye contact at all costs, most people seem to have been infected with the Olympic Spirit.London is buzzing, it feels like we are at the centre of the universe, the Olympics are everywhere and is all that people talk about. The control room went crazy today as Heather Stanning & Helen Glover won our first gold medal in the rowing and members of other countries were congratulating us on our win and I never even picked up an oar!


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