OH MY GOODNESS... and with apologies to anyone who is desperately trying to avoid all this or expecting coherence here, you might want to move on right now because I am in complete Olympic meltdown. Watching tonight unfold in the athletics stadium has been like nothing else because you have to remember that so often we just seem to miss out.. or are disappointed... or trip over... or get disqualified... or have to get ecstatic over one bronze medal. But three gold medals in one evening... sorry, it's all been a bit much.
Team GB are doing the home nation proud, six gold medals on Super Saturday and I have lost count of the number of times my throat has been choked, and my eyes have welled up, as yet another gold medal winner realises they will be on a postage stamp any day, and with a pillar box in their home town painted gold.
But it's all much more than that and I think this piece by Linda Grant in the Independent sums it up so well.
The last time so many people enjoyed themselves this much in London must have been VE Day...
It's true, the 'miserabilists' and prophets of doom have been out in force for years, as Linda Grant suggests...
It has been a miserablist bonanza since the announcement of our winning bid seven years ago. To read the tweets of the miserablists, you would think that a convention of international despots and asset-stripping rogue traders had come to town.
If you read the comments following that piece they are still there, that's fine, everyone is entitled to an opinion and I respect that, but I only read a few because it was another cycling final any minute and there could be more happiness in store. But I also hope a lot more of the miserabilists are converted and feeling just a fraction of the joy and sense of national pride generated in the Olympic Stadium this evening because it might be a long time before we experience this again in Britain...if ever in a lifetime.
The torch relay should have been the big clue that the Brits were going to embrace this and take it to their hearts, and it is hard to argue with that enthusiasm of the people, and a stadium full to the brim on the first day of athletics heats. We might be broke and on the back foot and in a bit of a mess all round, but we have all paid for this party, there was no way plenty of us were going to miss it, as Linda Grant has discovered, bravely admitting to a massive shift in her own opinion...
What has happened to London is that, in the space of a few days, it has become filled with hordes of individuals and families who are happy. Who are delighted to be in London, delighted to watch their sport played the very best it can be played, delighted to wave a national flag with the enthusiasm that comes of knowing that, unlike our English football squad, we're actually going to win something.
It's a long time since we've been allowed to feel a bit happy and united and show it, but 2012 has been the year for us to shake off the mizzogs, as we call it here, for a little while at least.
And, as you can see, Magnus has become quite the Olympic cat...
Meanwhile my own knitting Olympics have been in progress just to keep calm....and then having to unpick it all because of course I have done it wrong. I am doing some stitch sample squares which will probably make it into something cushion-like and which will be chock full of those memorable moments all knitted into every row.
How about you...surviving??
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