After a lengthy hiatus from the blogosphere, I have decided to return with a very specific angle: the Olympics, or more precisely, my Olympics volunteering experience. Tomorrow morning, at around 9.30am, I will be sat in Wembley with thousands of others, making up a small part of the 70000 that will 'make the Games happen'.
Why am I doing it? If I wanted to watch Eddie Izzard on a large screen, I'd sign up for his gigs, not rely on him to persuade me that this really is 'the greatest show on Earth'. Nor am I in it for some sort of muckraking journalistic thrill. I have no intentions of revealing that Lord Coe is in fact three midgets stood on top of one another, nor that the Olympic Stadium was built upon an old Indian burial ground.
I'm doing it because I love sport, and I want my slice of history. I want my 'I was there' moment. I want to be involved, on a day-to-day basis, with the carnival atmosphere that will reverberate around the city of London for two weeks. I am very fortunate in that I am financially secure enough to afford the whole experience; understandably LOCOG cannot offer any perks apart from London Zone travel expenses during the games themselves. This volunteering lark will take dedication, however. I initially felt it might be something of a fortnight-long jolly; chilling out, maxing, relaxing, being cool with people my own age, with the odd bit of ticket-scanning chucked in.
Naive. In actual fact, the training experience itself will be a trial. It is unfortunate that Orientation falls on the same weekend as the first anniversary of my wonderful father's death, something which may prove an ordeal as I sit through celebrity endorsements. From here, it is on to Hackney Community College in March for my role-specific Events Services Training, and from there, a day at the ExCel arena where I will be based for the fortnight.
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