Off to the Olympics

You can’t beat ’em so you might as well join ’em.
Those Olympians, that is. They get everywhere. Sculling across your TV screen, swimming out of the front page of your daily newspaper, lobbing heavy metal balls into your muesli bowl, running round and round the dining table...
Hang on a minute. Suffering from an overdose of beach volleyball here. Must have a little lie-down.
That’s better. Now let’s take these Olympics seriously.
It all started last Friday night, when James Bond and the Queen jumped out of a helicopter, narrowly missed Mister Bean and lit the Olympic tulip. Or something like that. Details are a little hazy because this blogger found himself regularly having to wipe away tears of laughter – big boys don’t cry, so it wasn’t unbridled emotion – at the sheer chutzpah of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony.
Give that man a knighthood, ma’am. Once you’ve recovered from the helicopter ride.
And so much has happened since then. Bath has laid claim to every rower, swimmer, rider, runner and beach volleyballist under the sun, although if you visit Penzance you’ll discover that they think they own Helen Glover, and Llanelli has a pretty strong claim on Dai Greene, seeing as he was born there.
Never mind, though: no-one can take away our Amy.
Olympic fever struck Dixon Towers big time on Saturday. We stapled our trusty Union Flag to the lintel of the garage door, checked to make sure the garage was still standing, Mrs D laid down the law about yours truly’s attempts to grow a pair of Earl-Bradley-of-Wiggins-style sideburns, and all outstanding DIY projects were mercifully put on hold as we finally decided it was time to buy our very own Olympic tickets.
Leaving it rather late, you might think? Not a bit of it. No ballots for us, we just went online and bought four tickets to the quarter-finals of the men’s football at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff without any trouble at all.
But if getting the tickets was a doddle, getting to the game may be more of a challenge. Driving isn’t really an option as they’ll be closing all the car parks round the stadium, and the last train from Cardiff back to Bath looks eminently missable.
So we’re looking at a quick trip round the Bristol ring road to Parkway, a train under the Severn, a queue to pick up the tickets, the minor detail of watching the game and then the whole journey in reverse at 10 o’clock at night.
Hannibal could have learned a lot about logistics from us when he took his elephants across the Alps.
And he didn’t have to worry about what to do if there’s extra time.
Team GB beat Uruguay on Wednesday night so we’ll be watching our own local heroes, including Bath boy Scott Sinclair, taking on the might of Korea.
And if you’re in Bath on Saturday night, you’ll hear the cheering from right across the Bristol Channel.