Lympics*

 For someone who hates sport it is very surprising that I love the Lympics.

It suits my nature, like eating Tapas, you only get little bits of something before you get a chance to get bored with it.  

The first year I watched was a very special year for many reasons. I had reached an age with some new found freedom. My bike was my best friend and I would ride for miles around the country lanes where I lived, sometimes with my little sister and sometimes with my friend. However, as my sister was young and my friend had protective parents I would often ride on my own. About 3 miles out I would come to a Ford, where boys would stand in the stream beside with their shoes off and trousers rolled up, pretending to be macho but fishing for sticklebacks with a pink butterfly net. If I was with my sister we would always stop and join them. Sometimes we brought our sandwiches and sat on the concrete ledge dangling our feet as we tucked into white bread filled with a pot of Princess sandwich paste (usually chicken and ham), a packet of hula hoops and a glass of squash that we had frozen solid in a plastic beaker with a lid the night before.

If my friend had been allowed out we often rode a bit further and after about 5 miles got to Ingatestone Hall, where we would stand at the gate and tell each other ghost stories and on the way home we would stop and talk to the tramp that lived under the A12. 

However, I loved the days when I was on my own. There was no limit to how far I could go or what I could stop and look at and I often cycled the full 10 miles to where my dad worked. The bull in the field between the pub and the telephone exchange he looked after was my way marker. He was a magnificent black beast with a ring in his nose that snorted with joy when he saw me. If I had known better, I would have been scared but instead I fed him polos from my pocket, covered in special 1970s coat fluff. Dad never minded his offspring turning up out of the blue and always greeted me as though he had been expecting me. Thinking about it, maybe he had? Maybe mum had got on the phone and said, “She’s been gone an awfully long time, expect a visit.” If she did, they never said.

I expect that looking after a telephone exchange in the Seventies was quite a boring job. No one even looks after the big ones any more but in those days an engineer was on site all day to keep everything working. A telephone exchange was a huge room with rows of large metal cabinets filled with wires and switches that gave off a faint electrical smell. Occasionally, a light would flash or turn from green to orange and he would get out his little leather bag, stamped with the word GPO and fix the problem. There was no ringing an automated line to report the problem and waiting 3 days to get it fixed in those days. Most faults were repaired before anyone knew there was anything wrong. I’m assuming, though, that there were more faults as it was new technology. 

The rest of the time was Dad’s own and that’s probably why he was pleased to see me. It broke up the boredom. He taught himself to play the trumpet and how to cook curries. 

In 1976, however, these trips were perfect. The weather was always hot enough to defrost my drink and Dad had the Lympics on the telly in the staffroom. This was at a point in my life where, if I wasn’t roving the country lanes on my bike I was upside down. This was the year of the epic battle between Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci. Olga, in her red leotard, lying on the beam on her front and flipping her legs over the top, like a human scorpion is an image that will stay with me forever. She seemed unbeatable and then this girl, only a few years older than me, in a white leotard with red blue and gold stripe down the side was amazing on every piece of equipment, gaining a perfect 10. She made Olga look like a has-been. 

Although I enjoyed gymnastics and has just gained my BAGA level 2 award, I was very aware that this kind of gymnastics was out of reach for any British competitor. We just didn’t have the discipline (or threat of death from a communist regime).

However, I was wrong. Our fantastic four have just earned a medal and I couldn’t be happier.

The UK is better at the Lympics than we can credit. We have always won medals, which is a fact that doesn’t compute, as we like to think of ourselves as the underdog. Our self-deprecating humour needs something to mock.

If, like me, you are struggling with this lack of humour, then there are always the names. This year we are still able to childishly snigger as Dong Dong swings like a bell from the asymmetric bars, Fanny Horta gets hit between the legs with a rugby ball,Florian Fuchs on the German hockey team stands next to British player Adam Dixon and Lucas Wank is left completely alone on the basketball court. If you aren’t that childish then maybe this brilliant commentary won’t appeal to you either but I think it’s a work of pure genius.

Joe Tracini - brilliant gymnastic voice over

I hope you are enjoying the Limpics  as much as I am. 

*I refuse to believe the O is necessary.