The Best of British

A big bell, William Blake, Brunel (played by Branagh), Burners-Lee, Bond, Mr Bean, The Beatles, Bohemian Rhapsody, bouncing beds, balloons, bicycles, Becks and "Betty" .... bloody brilliant Boyle, but perhaps just a bit bizarre and baffling to much of the world's audience. Just what was Slumdog Millionaire's director, Danny Boyle, trying to portray with his 'Isles of Wonder' Olympic opening ceremony? 

If you missed the point, read more about it here and here.

For me, the very best bits of an inspired event were....

The impressive industrial scene, slightly reminiscent of Tolkien's 'Mordor', during which the Olympic rings were "cast", then rose up to merge into the Olympic logo. Spectacular!

Then bumbling Mr Bean on the keyboard with the London Symphony Orchestra....

.... high jacking the great "Chariots of Fire"!

Not forgetting the Queen's cameo role, being stirred but not shaken by Bond... James Bond.... before she "parachuted"  into the Olympic stadium......

And that grin on Beck's face from the back of the speedboat, ferrying the Olympic Torch on its final leg of the 70-day tour of the British Isles....

...before the lighting of that magnificent cauldron by aspiring young athletes - the next generation of Olympians, nominated by previous generations of Olympians .... 

Read more about "Betty" (code name for the cauldron) over here

Other nice touches were acknowledging the Suffragette Movement - this being the first Olympics in which every participating country includes women in its team; paying tribute to the nurses of the National Health Service, and the wonderful work of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, and a pause to remember the casualties of both World Wars and the victims of the July 2005 London bombings.

I found the whirlwind tour of Britain's pop culture a bit disjointed and chaotic, and I was not too struck by the illustration of the social networking evolution (Girl meets Boy via Facebook), on the back of the tribute to the British inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

Of course, with 204 countries taking part, the athletes passing out parade was always going to take a while. I passed the time playing the "Been there! Been there! Going there! Born there! Lived there! Didn't know that was even a country!" game until Team GB finally made their appearance in... er... rather Elvis jumpsuitesque outfits!

I do wonder what Her Majesty made of it all....

Photos obviously not my own

Did you watch the Opening Ceremony? If so, what did you think?

Notes From Nat

Dear Men of Great Britain

Yes… that great ball of fire in the sky these past few days is indeed the long lost Sun. Yes, we have endured 89 days of nonstop torrential rain, and so yes, it is truly a marvellous sight to behold. Slightly less of a marvellous sight to behold, though, is all that flabby, white flesh out on display, in your desperate attempts to catch every last ray of sunshine. I am a firm believer in the health benefits of Vitamin D myself… but four words, gentlemen: Cod Liver Oil Capsules. You can find them at your local pharmacy… and while you’re there, please pick up some sunscreen. Otherwise you’re all going to end up transforming yourselves from 50 Shades of Pale into a uniform (and very unattractive) Boiled Lobster Red.

Better yet, unless you look like this…..

Keep your shirt on, man!

………

Dear Virgin Media

We have quite a history…. you and me. A lot of water under the bridge… a lot of my hard earned money going into your bank account in exchange for what you claim is the fastest, most reliable broadband service in the galaxy... though quite how I could ever prove that I would love to know, since I can’t even connect to my local office, let alone communicate with the Wide Wide World. Is that the logic behind Sir Dicky Branson’s quest for space tourism… so that he can extend his piss poor internet service into Infinity and Beyond? Seriously, this is all getting a bit boring now… you forever messing me around by dropping my connection, almost without fail on the day that I have a humungous deadline at work. 

I’ve worked out how to circumvent your incredibly unhelpful Help Line (is that your attempt at irony by the way?) by selecting the “If you are thinking of leaving us, press 5" option when I phone up to complain, yet again, that you are in breach of contract. You always answer that line immediately, don’t you? I reckon I’m flagged up as “Difficult Customer #1”, always passed onto the Technical Manager or the Senior Technician or some other Big Cheese. Listen, I will happily talk to Sir Tricky Dicky himself….if you will just give me a frikking reliable connection that does not drop off like clockwork at 4 pm every day, just around the time half the population feels the urge to post "What I am like having for tea -  LOL!" on Facebook.

........

Dear Travel Clinic

I see what you're doing.... playing on Nat's paranoia and phobia of catching some horrendous tropical disease abroad. And I've played along... typhoid, polio, diptheria, typhoid again, hep A, hep B.... you name it, I've had the jab! But rabies... in Thailand??? You mean to say there is a rabid monkey population just waiting to sink their teeth into me the second I set foot onto the tropical island paradise of the Gulf of Thailand? OK, OK.... stick it my left arm....

That is all.

Photos not my own.

.......

Some explanatory notes for the Notes From Nat:

 Unless you’ve been… ahem… otherwise tied up (in which case you already know all there is to know and don’t need any further “educational reading”)… the erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey (and the follow-up 50 Shades Darker and 50 Shades Freed) has been causing quite a stir, outselling Harry Potter and making their author a very wealthy woman. To be honest, I haven’t read the book... yet, but I now feel obliged to, purely for scientific research purposes of course, to see what all the darn fuss is about!


Sir Richard  Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies.


 Yes, I'll be travelling to Thailand in the near future... well, I have to use up the excessive quantities of Deet bug spray and Factor 80 sunscreen left over from the Vietnam and Cambodia trip. And I'm itching to go back to SE Asia....

Eight-legged Freaks

Arachnokarma. Believe me, it happens.

Spend the morning confining to the bottom of your Dyson cylinder the lifeless bodies of hundreds of itsy, bitsy, teeny little spiders that had taken up residence in your kitchen blind, you can expect later that same day to look up into the malevolent eyes of the big, fat, hairy Daddy of all spiders…lurking on your car windscreen visor, while you’re gunning down the fast lane of the M25.

Nat: Houston....we have a problem!

B (driving): What sort of problem?

Nat: The sort that involves a great big hairy spider dangling just above your head!

B (turning a slightly paler shade of grey): Well, just flick it away!

Nat: With what exactly?

B: I dunno.... your hand?

Nat (wondering why, after 17 years of living with a woman who turns into an hysterical, shrieking banshee every time she spots the teeniest spider, this man could even joke that said hysterical woman would touch a great big hairy, scary spider!): Are you insane?????!!!!

B: Well use your water bottle, then. I can't do anything... I'm driving.

Nat (shaking violently but somehow mustering the strength to grasp the water bottle and use it to bat the enormous, deadly looking spider across to HER side of the car!): Cr*p! Now it's on the window! MY WINDOW!

B: So wind down the window and shove it out!

Nat: NOOOOOOOO! It will jump on me!

B: And I can't drive with you sitting in my lap like this!

Nat: Pull over!!!

B: I can't! There's no hard shoulder...

Nat: Pull over, right now!!!!!

B brings the car to an emergency stop at the side of the road. Nat opens the door and leaps out, to witness the gigantic, hairy, venomous spider being summarily dismissed from the car.

Nat: He's trying to crawl back inside! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!!!!

B: Just get back in the car, woman! You're going to get yourself killed!

Why does he always have to be such a Drama Queen....?!

One of my favourite fridge magnets by Rose Rigden

On Yer Bike!

Back to my Vietnam photos...

What? You thought you'd seen them all by now? Nope, still quite a few to show.....

The scooter is the primary means of transport in Vietnam's cities, and there are millions of them! Apparently, 5 million in Ho Chi Minh City alone.

Entire families ride on them....

And carry their shopping...

Or floral tributes....

Or ladders....

Or even their pets!

Some lucky riders have a deluxe model....

And some just use theirs to chill out....

The Olympic Torch Comes To Town!

Lit in Greece, the Olympic Flame arrived in the UK on 18 May 2012 before setting out the next day on a 70-day Olympic Torch Relay. 


The Olympic Flame stands for peace, unity and friendship and is making its way through more than 1,000 cities, towns and villages in the UK, carried by a total of 8,000 Torchbearers.


Today it passed very close to where I live....

 12 year old Freddie Wright