Hero is an overused word.

If I hear the word 'hero' used inappropriately by the media again, I will scream.

The most recent occasion was, believe it or not, in relation to a golfer (yes, a golfer) who had won some trophy or other (being one of those people that think golf is a silly game that only spoils a good walk, I have no idea what tournament has been going on recently). Previous to that, the word was overused and abused during the Olympics with regard to our gold medallists.

Let's be clear on this, shall we? A hero is someone who puts his life on the line at extreme risk for the safety and security of others. Real heroes are selfless, brave and unassuming. Very often, the extreme bravery and courage they show is instinctive and if they had stopped to think about what they were doing, they probably wouldn't have gone there. Real heroes are rare things.

This eulogising by the media and in particular by TV journalists is quite simply a travesty of the English language. Top sportsmen and women are certainly tough and for many of their sports exhibit courage, but they fail on every other aspect of my definition of a hero. They certainly aren't self effacing or unassuming (quite a significant number of them court the media and make an absolute packet out of it), what they do is for themselves and let's not kid ourselves it's for "their country", and they aren't putting themselves on the line for others.

It's interesting that we very rarely hear the word 'hero' used about people that it might actually genuinely apply to - members of our armed forces on active service across the world, the police and ambulance service and the fire service all regularly face situations where they put themselves at risk for the sake of others and sometimes tragically lose their lives in doing so. But the term 'hero' isn't often used when these things are reported; instead we hear "s/he was a brave officer" or "s/he often put others before her/himself" even after the individual in question has died in pursuit of their duties. It's as though the press are afraid of using it in those situations, for some weird reason I can't fathom. But for some self promoting cyclist, male or female, who has enjoyed a modicum of success it's OK for some reason.

A while back I resolved to stop reading the papers because all they did was wind me up, and for a while I succeeded. then I slipped back into old ways and of course, it's impossible to avoid news reporting altogether; I am surrounded by TV, radio and trains full of commuters reading newspapers and I can't help but see it. And it still irritates me.

Perhaps the answer is to become a journalist myself and sell a freelance column with a slightly subversive view of the world to a local or national paper. Certainly the quality of writing could do with improvement. Hmmm, could be a new career path!

Wasn't it all rather a let down?

I only saw half the Olympics closing ceremony last night, until about 10.15pm, and then I’m afraid I got bored and went to bed. I have recorded the rest, really just so I can see the Spice Girls (which is rather sad) but perhaps it was inevitable after the wonderful opening ceremony and the drama of the last fortnight that last night fell rather short of my expectations.

I’m sure if you were there on the night, as 80,000 spectators were, that it was easy to get swept up in it all and enjoy the atmosphere, and I must say that the lighting effects were spectacular. The firework pictures in the newspapers this morning also looked rather good, but fancy lights and sparklers alone do not, for me, make a good night out.

If anything, I thought that the content of the ‘show’ lacked imagination. Yet again Madness were wheeled out (literally in this case) as was Annie Lennox plus a number of other famous musical faces and others not so famous (who on earth was that Emilie girl who opened the whole thing with that dreary song?).

What about celebrating other things British – not just focusing on London and music but broadening the horizon and looking at other famous landmarks and other artistic and athletic endeavours? Anyone watching around the world would

a)    Have trouble making out what it was all about what with taxis covered in newspaper and low loaders and

b)    Have come to the conclusion that London was all there is about Britain

I am conscious that this is all sounding rather churlish, particularly as I couldn’t be arsed to sit up until almost midnight to see it through, because it has been such a fabulous fortnight with not one duff note. The organisation has been superb, the sport has been spectacular (and that is coming from someone who doesn’t really like sport and never reads the back pages of the newspaper), the venues are world beating and the conduct and camaraderie of the competitors without fault.

Just imagine if this had been a fortnight festival of football – we would have had drunken louts ‘singing’ in the street, fights, bad sportsmanship on the pitch and obscene amounts of money being thrown at players just to turn up. We’ve had none of that, and even the most arrogant and hyped of competitors such as Usain Bolt have behaved impeccably (talking of 100 metre runners – don’t those guys have attitude?!)

Perhaps it is slightly unkind to moan, because artistic success is very much a subjective thing. I bet there are lots of you out there that loved last night’s ceremony, so maybe I just have to accept that it wasn’t my thing but agree that actually it was professionally staged and very well done, especially considering that services were either given for free or provided by volunteers.

And now we have to gear up for the Paralympics, which has been cheapened already by the fact it is on Channel Four, the home of Big Brother and Ice Road Truckers, and not the BBC.  Somehow, annoying as Claire Balding was fawning over the swimmers last week, C4 just won’t have the same amount of class. And it will be most annoying to have the viewing broken up by oversized opera singers trying to persuade me to ‘Go compare ‘ or by those f*****g meerkats (I used to quite like meerkats, now I feel like exterminating every last one of them!). But we’ll have to see.

I can tell by friends’ posts on Facebook that most of them have been tremendously excited by the Olympic extravaganza but personally, despite the success of Team GB and the heroic performances we have seen from some over the past fortnight, I can’t wait for it all to be over.

So roll on 9^th September, when the Paralympics finish, and let’s all get life back to normal.

Gold, gold, gold. Keep 'em coming!

Well it just goes to show that you can be proud to be British, whilst still not liking that many things about the UK.

I’m talking, of course, about the wonderful collection of medals accumulated by Team GB this weekend. From tennis to various track and field events to those in wetter environments, we have done ourselves proud and even I found myself shouting encouragement at the TV despite not really being a sports fan. It’s so nice to see enthralling sport on the telly that isn’t football!

Even Andy Murray came up trumps and paraded round Centre Court wearing a Union Jack (I wouldn’t have put it past him to drape himself in the Saltire). Wimbledon lost its stuffiness and was a better place for it, and the Olympic stadium went wild with emotion; how Jessica Ennis kept calm in the face of such frenzied support I will never know. You could sense the atmosphere even through the TV screen and it must have been awe inspiring to be there during that hour when we bagged long jump, women’s heptathlon and 10,000 metre golds.

So it makes you proud to be British. I might even get out my own union flag and drape it across the front of my house and I am looking with greedy eyes at a very nice union Jack T-shirt in the local posh dress shop.

The French, of course, are carping and throwing around sour grapes like they’re going out of fashion, after having been shown up following their gloating last week when Francois Hollande stated that “wasn’t it good of us to put on a great show just to allow his French athletes to win medals”. Well who’s third in the medal table now then, garlic munchers? Oh, that would be good old GB! And if you pro rata the number of medals we’ve won against our population, and compare it to the same pro rata’d figure for the US and China who are above us in the table and have a vastly larger populace, I bet we’d come out top.

All this patriotic flag waving doesn’t mean, however, that I particularly like Great Britain or want to live here. Yes, there are lots of good things about the UK but there’s a hell of a lot wrong with it too, and no amount of sporting triumph can take them away. Where should I start – Ed Miliband seems a good place, although Jessie J, work shy and unworthy dole scroungers (yes, controversial statement I know, but there are some out there) , Eastenders and John Terry are also good starting points for a list of ‘Things That Are Bad About Britain’. And it could go on for ever, this list, but then that would be boring and we’d all have a different opinion.

Of course wherever you live in the world has it’s faults and I have no illusion that where I want to go is paradise (well, we all know it isn’t because I want to go to Crete, and the Greeks are further up shit creek than we are and they’ve lost their paddle to boot!). But you have to find the place where your soul feels at home, and for me that simply isn’t the UK.

But for now, let’s bask in the reflected glory of not only our superb athletes but what is, so far, an impeccably organised games as far as the sport and facilities go (we’ll not talk about Locog or the ticketing fiasco, or the greedy unions who from my experience last week are doing no more work than normal for their extortionate Olympic bonuses and in fact for much of the time are probably carrying less people than usual as lots of Londoners are working at home). Seb Coe and his team should be congratulated and I hope that the media, who led the carping club beforehand, have the grace to eat their words and say how well we’ve done.

As to legacy, well who knows? We now have some brand new, wonderful facilities and perhaps private sector companies will step in and make sure they continue to be maintained and run efficiently because God knows there isn’t the money in the public sector.

Rule Brittania!

It's going well!

It seems like after a rather shaky start, Team GB is doing rather well in the medal tables. At the time of writing, we are fourth overall with six golds, six silvers and six bronze. One ahead of France, who only have five silvers. Ha! Take that, garlic munchers!

It must be hoped that this medal count will increase further. The sports in the first week of competition have not really favoured us and they aren't generally speaking things we excel in. Tom Daley and Rebecca Adlington aside, we haven't had a decent swimmer in decades, cycling has only recently come to the fore and as for gymnastics, well the bronze medal the other night is the first in that discipline for 100 years. Badminton, table tennis etc? The odd success but nothing consistent. Not really our sort of thing. We got our first gold medal this time in shooting, which to me is more of a country pursuit that involves killing innocent animals for fun or food, rather than a sport. A sport is something that makes you hot and sweaty isn't it, usually involving something roughly spherical or a pair of trainers? As far as I can see, shooting does neither of those things. Need I say more?

Today, of course, sees the start of the track and field athletics and the water sports, in particular sailing, are only just coming to their final stages where we are in with a good shout. We must stand a good chance of several medals in athletics across a whole range of disciplines. Whilst we probably don't have a cat in hell's chance of beating the Yanks, who have such a massive population base with such broad ethnicity that they have runners, weight lifters, gymnasts and the lot, we ought to be able to catch up the Chinese who have walked it in week one but never do well in all the second week stuff and we definitely ought to be able to beat the French. Our lives won't be worth living if we don't, and they'll never let us forget it.

Not being a sporty sort, I haven't really been that interested in the Olympics in the run up and got heartily sick of it being rammed down my throat by the media, but now it's here and there is more of an atmosphere I am enjoying watching the odd hour or two. Last night I sat in front of it and designed my pantomime set! I couldn't sit and watch it all day, but a short burst now and then to keep in touch with what is happening is OK. And you don't actually need to watch it all day - there are such long gaps between heats and events that the Beeb have time to replay and revisit ad infinitum. With 24 channels of Olympic sport, there is a lot of filler being given airtime.

This week might, I suppose, be quite exciting and I have never been averse to a bit of patriotic flag waving. Just a bloody shame our national anthem isn't a little more stirring. Rule Brittania or Land of Hope and Glory would be much more satisfying to sing along to, don't you think?

Did you get any of the late allocation?

The fiasco that is Olympic ticketing continues. And for once, it is no fault of Locog, who have simply been abiding by an agreement signed seven years ago that a certain proportion of tickets had ot be set aside for the 'Olympic Family' which basically means the professional bodies across the world which support and foster sports.

The same thing apparently happened in Beijing, but with China still being the closed country that it is we knew very little about it. It is an absolute outrage that these organisations get such a large allocation and then waste it when there are so many ordinary people that want to support the games and spend their hard earned money in doing so.

The late release of tickets for some high profile and prestige events such as the athletics has, of course, made many Londoners and locals very pleased; they have been able to buy access to key events which they desperately wanted to see and for which they had been previously unsuccessful.

And of course it is better for athletes of all countries to have full stadia watching and cheering them on. It is immeasurably better for the Olympic Authority to promote the venues and gain the desired levels of income to bolster the economy. In addition, full stadia mean more people spending money in shops, restaurants, bars and on public transport.

I was not myself interested in going to anything, I just don't like sport enough, but I know many people who were and are now delighted. Good luck to them, and i hope it didn't cost them an arm and a leg.

The IOC really needs to address this issue before the next games in 2016. A far smaller proportion of tickets should be set aside and if the Olympic Family organisations want more then they should have to bid for them like anyone else. That way lies fairness, transparency and good PR. Let's hope that the lessons of the ticketing problems here (including use of Visa only even on the Olympic site, venues that are too large for the expected crowds, unfair allocations to large organisations and sponsors etc) are learned for 2016 and rectified.

Sadly, I suspect money will talk and the situation will not be a great deal better. At least it won't be our economy and image that suffers, and probably it won't affect us hugely in terms of the number of people that can attend since South America is so far away. But nevertheless, it is just plain wrong, and totally not in the spirit of the Olympics and their wider aim of making sport more accessible to the masses.

Are you listening Mr Chairman of the IOC Jacques Rogge or whatever your name is? I doubt it.

Why do we celebrate getting beaten (or sunk!)?

I don't get all the fuss about the Titanic that there has been for the past few weeks. Of course I know why; the bloody thing sank 100 years ago on April 14th 1912, but I don't understand all the fuss. After all the hype and the money, it was a monumental failure when it came up against the best that Mother Nature had to offer which had been totally predictable.

You could argue that the Titanic was unlucky, I suppose. That a massive iceberg should be exactly where they didn't want it to be and that it pierced a vulnerable point on the hull could be construed as bad luck. But surely the point was that there shouldn't have been a vulnerable point and the ship's navigation instruments should have spotted it.

What is it about the British psyche which leads us to celebrate failures? They are littered throughout our history and dressed up afterwards as triumphs. Bannockburn, Flodden, Evesham, Paschendaele, Dunkirk... and the Titanic. All dreadful failures and all with massive losses of life. And all celebrated - why?

You don't catch the Americans celebrating Pearl Harbour, or the Japanese celebrating Hiroshima, or the Russians celebrating Chernobyl. Bet your life the Brits would!

Perhaps it's just an excuse for a party and our natural optimism. Perhaps just a refusal to accept defeat. I don't know, but it's very odd.

Personally it's a relief to be able to switch on the TV and not be bombarded with programmes about the damn thing, factual or fiction. But next it'll be the olympics and we'll be celebrating getting thrashed at various sports.

I don't get it. Really, I don't!

Six Nations and watching sport

Yesterday afternoon I had a nice peaceful time sitting and watching the rugby. For those of you not sportingly minded in any way, it was England /Wales and a traditional grudge match. And it was heightened this year by the fact that neither side has lost a match in the series yet, and so probably someone was going to come away gravely disappointed.

Seeing as I’m someone not usually remotely interested in sport, it’s surprising that not only do I enjoy watching rugby, but I actually understand it too. I could possibly put my interest down to the very shallow reason that in rugby you do regularly get a good eyeful of lovely, muscley, masculine thighs when they go into a scrum, but that doesn’t explain my enhanced understanding of the rules. I’ve never even had a boyfriend in my entire life that played it, so I have no idea why.

This match in particular also had a rather gorgeous Kiwi referee who it must be said had impossibly good looks and was wearing a very fetching blue outfit. So yet another reason to sit in front of the telly for one hour forty minutes with only a short break for a cuppa at half time.

The Six Nations is one of the few sporting events most of us here will sit down and watch together. Whilst I’ll watch winter sports until the cows come home, and will watch athletics in the summer occasionally if I have nothing better to do, that’s about it. The Hubby and his boys are footie mad and will watch Chelsea, Arsenal or England ad infinitum. The Ashes for the Cricket, golf, any other team sport are all grist to their mill – bores me rigid! Particularly golf, which is like watching paint dry with the occasional panic when a fly gets stuck to it. What’s the point? I must say I agree with Oscar Wilde (at least I think it was him) in saying that golf is a good walk spoiled. (If it wasn’t him, and you know who it was, do let me know!)

I’m not even particularly interested in the tennis at Wimbledon any more and Andy Murray certainly isn’t my idea of a national hero, miserable Scots git!. What is the point is being talented and rich if you have no personality and no charm? All the hysteria about trying to get into Wimbledon and sitting on ‘Murray Mount’ (previously ‘Henman Hill’) to cheer him on leaves me cold.

The Olympics is also of very little interest to me this year. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic thing to have in London and if we get it right, it will be marvellous positive publicity for good old Blighty, but personally I’d quite like to go abroad for the whole three weeks and just let them get on with it. It will dominate the telly, make getting to work a nightmare and fill London with lost foreigners. I have no interest whatsoever in trying to get tickets for anything, and it is quite beyond me why anyone would want to queue up for hours to get into a venue and sit on uncomfortable seats with nothing to eat or drink and not enough toilets to watch a race which might last as little as ten seconds. I know its supposed to be all about the experience, but wouldn’t that be more comfortable in your own easy chair with a cup of tea and packet of chocolate hobnobs which haven’t cost the earth because you’ve had to buy them there because they won’t let you take your own food and drink in?

Of course we’re all different, so if you’ve got tickets good luck to you and I hope you enjoy it. When it’s raining, your seat has a puddle on it and there is a queue 45 minutes long for the loo, think of me in my nice warm house with my hot cup of tea. I’ll be thinking of you!

Why do we try to win at everything?

Six nations rugby has started this weekend. England are making their usual dismal showing and watching them this afternoon, it is incredible to think that not too long ago, we won the rugby world cup. The Scotland/England match was an incredibly boring one except at the beginning of the second half with an almost immediate try by England. That was the only exciting thing that happened. 

There's something in the British character which doesn't make us good winners. We don't have the belief, drive or ambition somehow. And we try and spread ourselves too thinly and try and be good at everything, which just isn't possible. Most countries have the sense to identify what they are good at and direct most of their energies and sponsorship in that direction. 

Take the alpine nations - they excel at skiing, bobsleigh, biathlon and all the sports associated with nasty, slippery, cold ice, as you would expect. They don't particularly try to be good at rugby, footie, athletics or things like that because they know what they're good at. Top skiers in the alpine nations are treated as heroes in a similar way to the treatment football players get here. Kenyans can run like the wind, but you don't see them trying to play hockey. Bit of a generalisation, as I'm sure those sports are played, but they don't try and thrust themselves on the world stage at them.

We on the other hand try to be good at the lot - all the team sports (even though by and large the Brits are not great team players) all the lone player stuff (tennis, badminton etc) winter sport, summer sport, aquatics, equine and all. It's a mistake. You can't be good at everything. 

The Olympics this summer will give us another chance to try and win everything under the sun whereas really we ought to focus on the sailing (we are an island surrounded by water - most of it freezing cold and polluted but water none the less), equine sports and gun sports (we are a huntin', shootin' fishing' crowd in about 70% of the UK and there are vast numbers of horses in Britain) and track and field, which is taught in public schools and which has somehow a quintessentially British air about it. Forget the football, tennis, acrobatics, swimming and so on (Rebecca Adlington aside, what other famous British swimmers can you think of?), let's focus our effort on where we have a real chance.

I'm useless at sport as I have said before. I can't even run for a bus, can't catch and have no coordination whatsoever. I am the world's most clumsy woman and if there is something to drop, spill, break, fall over/down, trip over I will do it. I do have a good eye and used to be quite handy at shooting with a rifle (I had a schoolfriend whose dad was a farmer and let me have a go) but that's as far as it goes. So I'm no threat to those worthy people who fancy having a punt for a medal at any sport you care to name.

I do appreciate that I am not going to be able to change the Brit attitude to attempts at world domination. We have lost the empire and no longer have African slaves, so we're having a go through sport in much the same way as the Germans are trying to take over the world through fiscal dominance; the Greek finance minister is on camera as saying that Angela Merkel's proposal to put a German in change of the Greek Treasury would be like the start of World War III and another invasion! So I will have to put up with it, and watch valiant attempts across the whole spectrum of physical actvity, most of it doomed to failure.

I wish them well, but I suspect it may all end in tears!

London Olympics - the outrageous demands begin!

The London Olympics are fast approaching. Didn't it seem a long time ago when we had all the hoo-ha about us beating the nasty French to host the damn things, and now they are almost upon us.  

Personally, I couldn't be less interested. I never have been keen on sport (I was always the last kid to be picked when my class chose teams for games lessons) although I will watch the athletics on the telly with a nice cuppa and a pack of plain chocolate hobnobs by my side, and I do like watching although not participating in winter sports. And I will watch the six nations rugby when it starts this weekend, but that's principally because lots of nice muscley thighs will be on show.

The political posturing and grabbing for personal advantage has been going on for ages, and the press have been having a field day speculating how things can go wrong and what might fail. Also what 'Team GB's dismal showing might be in the medal table (Team GB - awful title!). The press really do piss me off when they do things like that - it's perfectly alright to be able to express a range of views but this is an event which gives us an opportunity to shine in the world and show them that we are not really a bunch of repressed, miserable, penny pinching gits who hate the rest of the world and live in a constant atmosphere of rain and fog (we are, but that's neither here nor there). How about a bit more positive news and views and some celebratory anticipation for a change?

However the latest showing from the staff of London Underground, led by the charismatic Bob Crow, simply beggars belief. Each and every employee of LU, some 14,000 of them in total, has been offered £500 each simply to show up for work during the Olympic period. That's just for clocking on, and would be in addition to any overtime payments or shift allowances. This payment amounts in total to £7million, which has to be funded from the fare paying public. Not only is it outrageous that this payment has been offered in the first place, but even more outrageous is that the greedy bastards have had the temerity to turn it down saying it's not enough.

How VERY dare they? The rest of us still have to go to work during the Olympics and we won't be getting any extra cash for doing so. Why should they be any different? The rest of us are expected to perform to the standard required by our employers as we would normally do, so why shouldn't the tube drivers? It is a disgrace that in these times of austerity, when so many of the people the tubes are carrying are struggling, that such blatent greed should be exhibited.

The tube drivers could have done themselves a favour and stored up some brownie points for when they really do need public support. They could have worked as usual, for normal money plus a bit of overtime and a few extra shifts, during the games and helped foster an atmosphere of public pride in a high quality service which this country at the moment so badly needs. Instead, they have alienated almost every single member of the travelling public and gained themselves some appalling publicity nationally and internationally for being out of touch, selfish and totally lacking any sense of a pride in their job and in public service. They don't deserve a penny of any extra payment they will get (and they will get it, because we simply cannot afford for the transport system to collapse at any time between July and September for any reason whatsoever) and should feel totally ashamed of themselves.

Are you listening Bob Crow, because you bloody well should be? I doubt it; you are one of the last of the old fashioned union leaders who thinks that they are entitled to rule the world because they give a few thousand quid to a political party and therefore can hold the country to ransom.

Once these games are out of the way, David Cameron and Boris Johnson should show their metal and tackle this problem once and for all. After all, there are plenty of other people out there not fortunate enough to be in a job at the moment who would love to fulfil their childhood ambition to be a train driver. That's an idea; let's sack the lot of them and start again. It may be the only way to get rid of the canker!