Photograph Quiz:
Photo no. 102 (perhaps):- A flag is a flag is a flag … so what is so special about this flag? How old do you reckon it might be? What are its dimensions?
Dear Blog,
Earlier this year when it was announced that LOCOG would be allocating tickets to Olympians relevant to their Olympic event, I half joked with you Blog that it was just my luck that I chose to run the marathon in the Olympic Games and I would therefore be allocated a street corner on some street in Central London on which to view the Olympic Marathon pass. All Olympians were allocated two sets of two tickets each. Yes, Blog, I watched the Men’s and Women’s Marathons. I also watched the two Walks. From our camp site in London, it was straight onto the Victoria underground line to Green Park, and a 400 yard (metre to you Bog) walk down to Constitution Hill. For the 50 kilometre Walk, I assumed that, as the event would be lasting some four hours, spectators would not be arriving too early to stand around for the best part of a day in anticipation of the Walk to come. I thought they would roll up during the course of the race to have a little look at what was going on, so they could boast to their friends and acquaintances that they had been to the Olympics, done the Olympics and got the Olympic t-shirt. I was totally wrong. 90 minutes before the start of the 50 kilometre Walk the pavements were crammed, three or four deep, never mind the sun beating down. It was mind bogglingly full. Ballsed up there then Colin!! As we approached the barriers, I spotted a gap in the crowds of about 20 yards (20 metres to you Blog) where no one was standing. Strange??? Especially as opposite, on the other side of the road was the drinks station for the walkers as they returned towards Buckingham Palace. The lap turn was just up the road, clearly visible. A couple of people were sat spread on the pavement behind the retaining barriers; no one else in the gap which afforded excellent views of not only the line of tables acting as one of the feed stations but of the course turn just up the road. That was all. Strange or what? The rest was space. Barriers holding back the pressing spectators elsewhere, but here there was no crowd jammed together, just those three people sat on the kerbside behind the barrier. As my wife, my daughter and I drew closer, it became apparent that the top of the barrier had dozens of small Chinese flags jammed in place. Tiny red banners hanging limply in the hot morning sun. So that was it. A territorial claim. An obvious pre-emptive strike to assert ownership of a section of desirable British real estate and declare U.D.I. on behalf of the People’s Republic. No way Yingsay … no way. This bit of Constitution Hill will be forever England, despite any thoughts of Chairman Moa to the contrary. Like the USS Ulysses with its backup fleet steaming into the Straits of Formosa in the 24th century to establish opposition to Eastern Empire’s expansionism and to protect the rights of the democratic West, I sailed straight into the space and leant across the barrier amongst the little red banners staking my claim to this Little bit of Britain; this stretch of our sceptre isle would be safe in my hands, at least until after the Race Walk had finished. Unfortunately, my back up flotilla of wife and daughter succumbed to the aggressive stance offered by the threat the four seated Chinese and steered off to the starboard to avoid confrontation and to fight for space amongst the crowds. I dropped my shoulder bag onto the pavement, staking my claim to squatter’s rights, establishing a foothold amongst this attempted land grab. None of your communist Rachmanism here Yingsay. What did I do you ask Blog?? I showed a stiff upper lip and I poured myself a cup of Earl Grey tea (no milk, no sugar) to show I was not going to be intimidated. Of course, I normally have Lapsang at this early hour but I felt that the sound of Lapsang pouring into my beaker would give these Chinese johnnie wallahs the idea that I was trying to convey to them a subliminal message that I was only being superficially belligerent and I really wanted to be subservient. So Earl Grey it had to be. By the time my tea had cooled enough to sip, the Chinese contingent had grown to more than half a dozen, all talking animatedly amongst themselves. It was evident that they were not voting for me to be this month’s Red Dragon. They were clearly agitated at my presence at ‘their’ section of barrier. I swear I heard a couple of four letter hanzi. Blog I kid you not. I thought these young Chinese would have had more decorum? Swearing like that in public. With young children around as well. And the women were just as bad as the men. Really. I ask you, what is the world coming to? One student was going ballistic on his mobile. After eleven and a half minutes of eye ball to eye ball stand-off, three more young men arrived each carrying a heavy sack, which they plonked down on the grass border, opened and proceeded to throw the contents at me; Little Red Books! Blog, would I kid you? The situation was not getting better. Of course, even at that close range, some of the Little Red Books missed me and flew over the barriers onto the road course which was to be used for the 50 Kilometre Race Walk, soon to start. The race officials were not amused, not amused at all. They started gathering up the Little Red Books and started lobbing them back over the barrier. The Chinese took this to be an aggressive act of retaliation. They were livid. Time for a master stroke of diplomacy, I thought. So I gathered up all the Little Red Books lying on the pavement around me, and there were quite a few. I made them into a neat little stack, a platform about two feet high (60 centimetres to you Blog) onto which I clambered. It afforded me an excellent view up and down Constitution Hill. I could even see my wife and daughter further down the road among the packed crowds straining for a glimpse of the roadway. I waved to them but they pretended not to notice. I felt proud to be British, perched up there above the threatening yellow peril. Because of the attitude of the score or so Chinese, I feared that the atmosphere was distinctly poisonous. I felt that the thirty plus Chinese at any time might resort to violence. I think that at this point, had I owned a mobile phone, I would have been tempted to get in touch with one of the armed Jaguar helicopters gunships circling overhead to warn them of my plight and to inform the troops on top of the tower block with their ground to air missiles, to retarget their fire power onto the Chinese Embassy. Just in case. Forty Chinese crowding around me trying intimidation tactics was unnerving but I had the advantage of superior height from my vantage point. As a nation, they tend to be little short arses anyway. I didn’t like to ask what had happened to their inscrutability. It might have sounded provocative in the circumstances. Instead, I adopted an imperialist attitude. In the face of growing odds, I thought of the British Empire and what it stood for. The Empire strikes back and all that. My demeanour would have been regarded by the British Raj fighting the Chinese on the North West frontier as inspirational. Just then a foreign lady pushed her way through the fifty Chinese to the front of the barrier to get a good view of the Walk Race when it finally got underway. I thought she was going to offer moral support to my resistance of the communist threat. I think she may have been Ecuadorian. I could be wrong, Blog. But she started shouting at me. All I could make out was ‘Julian this’ and ‘Julian that’. I was most surprised, taken aback I can tell you. To have a discussion about the Mandelbrot set at 9 o’clock in the morning in central London was not what I was expecting when I got up that morning. But then. Each to his own, I say. In factal, by the time we had got onto the finer points of the algorithm, and our mutual admiration of the work of Carolina Reed, I could see she was coming around to my way of thinking and we began to form an tentative Anglo-Ecuadorian alliance against the Sino expansionism along the barrier away from Buckingham Palace, up constitution Hill towards where the 50 kilometre Race Walk would turn around at the end of each two kilometre lap. Together we seemed to be having a calming effect on the diplomat spat with the Eastern tourists. The threat of armed conflict was receding, there now appeared little chance of the situation deteriorating into a proxy war in Syria, with the possibility of it spiralling into a release of chemical agents and finally mushrooming out of control into a nuclear reaction force invading the drinks station across the road. Both parties were beginning to accept a mutually neutral stance in the certain knowledge that a further conflagration of bad feelings would lead to us all missing the Race Walk. So, when the Race Walk Referee on his final inspection of the course spotted me at the side of the road and came over to chat, and when he was joined by two of the Race Walk Managers assisting at their respective feed station opposite, coupled with a Walk Olympian from a couple of years back adding his tuppence (one new pence to you Blog), the atmosphere around me suddenly changed. There was a definite easing of tension. The Chinese obviously saw that I was an important person. An Olympian of renown. They all bowed to me in respect. I smiled benignly. As Great Britain did not have a competitor in the 50 kilometre Race Walk and to show there was no lasting ill feelings between us, I thought it only fair that I cheered loudly every time that the Chinese walkers passed by on both sides of the road. The Chinese spectators obviously appreciated my gesture. More so when Si Tianfeng took the bronze medal and I gave the thumbs up sign to my erstwhile fellow adversaries. The seventy Chinese and I parted with friendly handshakes all round and an exchange of flags. Bless.
Colin.
P.S. I will drop you a note Blog about the 20 kilometre Walk and the Men’s and the Women’s Marathon races. Something for you to look forward to?
P.P.S. How much do you think my Chinese flag will fetch on e-bay Blog? How many quids will it raise for the children's charity for disable children, Tiny Tims Chilren's Centre in Coventry??
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