Getting Choked

30^th July

I woke up still buzzing from the shift the night before. I’m fully aware that this blog is beginning to suffer for its lack of cynicism, and you probably want me to be stripping the Olympics bare. I’m trying, I really am. I just can’t. When I walked into Waterloo station yesterday, it was an assault on the senses. The noise, the colours, the palpable buzz.

In an attempt to avoid scurvy, and to bring a touch of class to Wetherspoons, I ordered porridge in a pub. I’ve spent the last three mornings there, and quite frankly it’s a horrible vision into the future when I’m on the dole. Chilling.

Perhaps the only downside to my first shift was the Faustian pact I seem to have made with my bag. In return for the use of a socially acceptable man-bag, I’ve got a red mark (some might even call it a ‘brand’), across my shoulder where the strap was digging in. It’s like a prison camp* mark.

*This does no way imply that my job or Twickenham base is anything like a prison camp.

Shift was much less exciting than yesterday. For a start, my celebrity spot of the day, the Azerbaijan Sports Minister, had nowhere near the gravitas of Preston.

I’ve also established the hierarchy of this job.

Us: Don’t know what we’re doing and know that. Also we don’t care.

Team Leaders: Don’t know what they’re doing and know that. They’re panicking.

Contracted security: Don’t know what they’re doing and don’t care as long as they get paid.

People with headsets: Think they know what they’re doing. They don’t.

I also learned that weightlifting fans are wankers. A fat American redneck warned me that ‘the next person to tell me I can’t come through a door is getting CHOKED’. I almost replied ‘catch me if you can’, but I didn’t want to get…'choked’.

A chap called Anthony Higgs was on my subteam today. I pointed at his accreditation, and joked,

‘Are we related?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so’.

All jokes are frowned upon at the Olympics.