CLOSING CEREMONY

My brother is already there this morning at the Olympic Stadium in advance of tonight’s Closing Ceremony. He’s working there today and very excited to be part of it. I have friends that will be going too and I am quite sure it will be amazing. I have been lucky enough to acquire a last minute ticket for the London Live Closing Ceremony concert at Hyde Park which will be a good place to massively soak up the atmosphere.

I had planned to get up to watch and cheer on the marathon this morning. But instead I am enjoying watching it on TV and London looks truly amazing – if not a little bit hot for the runners. When you think that we generally just host one London marathon a year and yet this time it’s just one other event in many – it does make you think about what a lot of organisation has gone into these games and what a triumph they’ve been. The games have taken over our lives – I even dreamt about them last night (a security issue, so more of a nightmare) but how great that we’ve all got behind all our competitors, watched sports we’ve never been interested before and cheered on people we’ve never heard. What a collective spirit has emerged. I even went up to the Southbank on Friday night just to soak up the atmosphere and walk to Waterloo Bridge to take pictures of the Olympic rings and London was truly looking brilliant:-

The Closing Ceremony party tonight is going to be massive and London has done the games proud. But as the lights go down and the flames go out and we leave the venue like tired over-excited children leaving a wild birthday party or we turn off the TV I wonder how everyone is going to feel – relieved or disappointed that it’s all over? Whilst we’ve all been away in Sports La La land (as Kellogsville says in her comment) there are lots of economic issues to deal with. But hopefully the feel good factor will last a little bit longer. It’s been great having athletes on the first ten pages of the newspaper instead of Mervin King and triple dip recession news so we all need to be eased very gently back into the big wide world….please – otherwise our Post Olympic Stress Disorder will need some serious attention.