Last Saturday has already gone down in the annals of British sporting history, with gold medals all day, but particularly the three in the Olympic stadium in one dazzling 45-minute spell in the evening.
This was, for me, the day that I got to use the only tickets I'd been able to secure, for a morning's handball in the Copper Box. Taking the advice, or rather the dire warnings, on travel and getting to the venue early, I was up at six to meet my mate and head up to the park. The travel was, in fact, a doddle, as was getting through security and into the park. Friendly and efficient welcome, everybody chipper and a state of happy expectation. A slight hiccup when one of the many volunteers greeting crowds from vantage points on the top of step-ladder high chairs, on spotting a Belgian flag, yelled, "Good morning, Germany!" through her loudspeaker. Never mind - in keeping with the general atmosphere of goodwill, they took it in good heart.
Excitement grew pretty quickly after getting our bearings; I even posed for a photograph - willingly - in front of the Olympic Stadium, with a union flag. Anybody who knows me will realise the double-rarity value of such a thing. So, we headed to the Copper Box in plenty of time for the couple of games we were to see.
We saw a valiant GB side, put together from nothing in the past six years to compete at these Games, get handed their usual thrashing, and then saw South Korea v Serbia. A couple of hours very well spent in a cracking venue, with a loud, positive crowd really getting into both games. Handball is a game I've always thought would go down well in Britain if it were played to a decent standard, and it's been one of the success stories of the Games.
The rest of the day, though, was genuinely one of the great sporting experiences of my life. My mate and I spent the rest of the day and all evening in the Park, sitting watching British successes on the two huge screens they've put up there. All around were noises of cheering from the huge main stadium, from the hockey stadium, the basketball arena and around the screens themselves. As darkness fell and the big stadium filled up, partly emptying the park in the process, those without tickets to go in gathered in front of those screens and saw those three golds in quick succession. For all of them, but for Mo Farah in particular, there was jubilation. I saw, and felt, national pride without it spilling over into jingoism, and no trouble. It was an entirely positive experience. We left just as Jessica Ennis was receiving her gold medal, hearing the 80,000-plus in the stadium singing the anthem as we made our way out.
However much I was enjoying the Games already, nothing had compared to that Saturday. I have, needless to say, sat up late into each night since, trying until the early hours to secure tickets for anything else, anything, anywhere, without success. With so little time left I've basically given up trying now, and must instead look forward with huge anticipation to the closing ceremony, which I'm lucky enough to have a ticket for through my girlfriend.
With just four days to go as I type, it's been a huge success so far. They've ballsed up the ticketing, as I predicted in a much earlier post months ago, and they've ballsed up the mascots - in the Megastore in the Park, ranks of forlorn Wenlocks and Mandevilles sat unsold, while this new lion thingy which has appeared lately was flying off the shelves - but they've got the Games themselves right. Throw in a British public which, both in the excellent volunteers and the vast, positive, celebratory crowds, have switched off our innate reserve and pessimism for a couple of weeks, and you've got an absolute bloody marvel.
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