Kazakh Attack

8th August

Regretfully, I don't know much about Kazakhstan. I’ve seen Borat, and that was shit. I’m never going to go there on holiday, and I couldn’t even point it out on a map for you. If you need any more reasons as to why I may not be entirely enamoured to the country, read on.

Today was the toughest shift of all by some distance, which isn’t a particularly challenging barometer, but even so, it was hard. 99% of the people I’ve dealt with have been fantastic, and hopefully my removed cynicism and new-found love of the Human Race has been conveyed in the previous blogs. However, there must have been something in the beer tonight. Alcohol, most likely.

Case Study One: The Frenchman

Me: ‘Ah yes, Row 29, you’re at the back there. Have a good evening. Go on, Row 29. No, that’s not Row 29, that’s Row 16- it’s a sell-out, would you move? OI!’

Pepe Le Pew: ‘I… Don’t…Speak…Eeeenglish’.

Now, most would be phased by this. But I am a man who has studied French from the days of Moustache the Naïve Young Cat in Year 7, up to AS Level, with Moustache the Clinically Depressed Teenage Cat With No Career Prospects.

Me: ‘Vous avez besoin de monter l’escalier, votre billet dit… vingt-neuf.’

And that was the last we heard from Pepe Le Pew. Ed 1-0 France.

The second diplomatic incident of the night was somewhat less straightforward. If I didn’t know that sometimes people are simply belligerent arseholes, I’d opine that certain nations were attempting to sabotage the Olympics through sheer jealousy.

Three Kazakhstanis were sat in the wrong seats. This sounds like the start of a very bad, very politically incorrect joke. In some ways it is, but bear with it. One simply didn’t have a ticket. When I asked to see their tickets, they looked at me, laughed, and carried on watching the boxing. I was fully aware that if I pushed them too far, I could end up with a horse’s head in my bed, but I carried on telling them to move.

Then, the beauty of our nation kicked in.

Informing the world of my distaste for Kazakhstan

‘Oi. Russki. The kid said move. Now farking move’, a chirpy Dick van Dyke type offered.

‘It ain’t one rule for you, now facking piss off’, remarked Sid James, in between laughs.

I think, if required, I’d have had a whole army of pissed-up Londoners ready to go into battle against the Soviet Union for me. As it was, there was no noise from the Russki boys, escorted out by the security contractors. Incredibly, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, this was the first useful thing they had done all Olympics.

Once more, a crowd of Mongolians tested my patience, entering without tickets, but by this point, I was ready to take on the world.

Backed, of course, by the greatest nation.

Ours.