Since I'm amid all these Olympian values, it seems only apt to hail wondrous achievement much in the same way that the antennae are tuned to detect bunkum.
For this reason on Tuesday I unreservedly take my hat off to the affable Australian swimmer Hayden Stoeckel.
The self-avowedly shy country boy from Berri, South Australia, won the 100 metres backstroke bronze medal on the most salient sporting stage behind the legend that is Aaron Peirsol and his fellow American Matt Grevers.
Stoeckel who trains in Adelaide, the main town in South Australia, came in to face the media and instantly declared that he didn’t like facing the media. So much so that he’d even underperformed in races to avoid the glare of limelight.
He’s been given some training, he said, which had helped him conquer his trepidation about being up close and personal with the wolves.
But truth be told, it was an adoring pack that he encountered after his efforts in the pool. Mind you at 6ft 5ins tall, I’d dare anyone to try and rile the lad.
Questions were more biographical about his parents and what he did for hobbies.
“I just like to watch footie and hang out with me mates,” he replied. It seemed perfectly normal and healthy for someone who’d turned 24 two days into the games.
He also revealed that he’d given up swimming eight years ago but was persuaded to get back into the pool by his parents.
More recently there’s been work with a psychologist to help him accept that suffering is good for his art.
On Monday Stoeckel had become a contender for the 100 metres backstroke after setting the fastest time in the semi finals in a new Olympic record of 52.97 seconds.
His coaches in the Australian camp quickly calmed him down by telling him that he still had a final to race.
They did a good job.
By contrast another Australian, Leisel Jones, was so comfortable with the cameras and the questions on Tuesday that you could have mistaken her for a meejah darling.
But then again she has been told since her mid teens that she is the anointed one in the breastroke. She was selected for the Australian team at 14 and at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 won silver.
When she set a world record in the 200m breaststroke in the run up to the Athens games for years later, she was expected to take the gold. But it didn’t work out like that.
She came third in the 100 metres and second in the 200 metres.
Now at the ripe old age of 22. She was voluble as she outlined her odyssey from the despair and defeat in Greece to the glory and gold in China.
The message essentially was that there was more to her life than swimming.
What I find fascinating about being in Beijing is hearing these tales of the intangible. The driven one becomes a tougher competitor by gaining a wider outlook and the taciturn one explodes through embracing focus.
“You’ve got to hurt to succeed,” said Stoeckel. “I never liked pain. As soon as I hit that pain barrier I’d back off. And I’ve just learned now that you’ve got to push it.
“ If you hurt in training you’re not going to hurt in a race. You do 32 100s and it’s just hurts and hurts and you come out and do 100 metres and you think I can do 32 of these.
“Then you come out here and do 100m and swim awesome and not hurt and it’s just an amazing feeling.”
Will you get recognised when you go back to Berri? slurped one of the wolves. “Oh yes because it’s not very big. I might even get noticed in Adelaide…”
A shy lad looked worried for an instant.
But with his height and what he’s done, people aren’t likely to take chunks out of him.
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Monday, 11 August 2008
The Shocked and Stunned
Well you could have knocked me down with a feather.
Just when I thought that it might have been a bit harsh to set up a “squirmometer’’, confirmation has come that is so very much needed.
Maybe it has something to do with all that water going into their heads but the swimmers are providing streams of unconsciousness.
After the 41 year old American Dara Torres provided us with: “Age is only a number,” and “the water doesn’t know how old you are when you hit it”, the British swimmer Rebecca Adlington came up with a swift combination of phrases one of which I believed had been consigned to the list of no-nos.
When I saw that the 19 year old was from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, my mind went back to my time on the Nottingham Evening Post in the mid 1980s.
Her very presence at the Olympics would have been a big story. The fact that she’s won gold will be bugled, I’m sure, across the front of the paper.
And rightly so for - to rework the stock phrase of Mick Channon, an English former footballer who was for a while a TV pundit - the girl done well.
But it’s on that score that she came up well short.
Asked how she felt about being the first British woman since 1960 to win gold in the pool, Adlington said: “It’s absolutely amazing. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m over the moon.”
The last phrase would have been familiar to Channon and his ilk from the 1970s.
It was a flourish that we used to hear virtually every Saturday night on BBC TV’s Match of the Day. And it made the progression from the mouths of footballers into the vernacular to suggest transcendant elation.
Conversely the set expression to epitomise rank injustice or abject misery became “sick as a parrot”.
Some inventive players tried to introduce some flair into the post-match analysis game with “mad as a dog” and some even tried “chuffed” to describe the joy of victory.
But while that sort of eloquence was welcome, they never made the journey into the public mind.
A couple of years ago, the Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard – dubbed one of the more articulate of his generation because he passed some exams at school - used the word “gutted” after a narrow loss.
I thought I detected a wry smile on his mouth but maybe that was the bitter taste of defeat.
Perhaps Lampard, who is deemed to be media savvy, was using it with a tad of post-modern irony.
Don’t think that’s the case for young Adlington. Her press conference responses suggested that she isn’t used to the attention.
But not even interviews with the Nottingham Evening Post will have prepared her for what she is going to start experiencing from now.
She’s a gold medallist in her first Olmpic games at the age of 19.
The only thing now is that the pressure will probably mount up on her to defend her title on home soil in Britain in four years time.
It’s all set up for a brilliant story on that angle. But my abiding memory will be of her and compatriot Jo Jackson - who got a bronze - just smiling and hugging each other for a good minute in the pool like two kids.
It was natural and sincere.
They’d got a result.
Just when I thought that it might have been a bit harsh to set up a “squirmometer’’, confirmation has come that is so very much needed.
Maybe it has something to do with all that water going into their heads but the swimmers are providing streams of unconsciousness.
After the 41 year old American Dara Torres provided us with: “Age is only a number,” and “the water doesn’t know how old you are when you hit it”, the British swimmer Rebecca Adlington came up with a swift combination of phrases one of which I believed had been consigned to the list of no-nos.
When I saw that the 19 year old was from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, my mind went back to my time on the Nottingham Evening Post in the mid 1980s.
Her very presence at the Olympics would have been a big story. The fact that she’s won gold will be bugled, I’m sure, across the front of the paper.
And rightly so for - to rework the stock phrase of Mick Channon, an English former footballer who was for a while a TV pundit - the girl done well.
But it’s on that score that she came up well short.
Asked how she felt about being the first British woman since 1960 to win gold in the pool, Adlington said: “It’s absolutely amazing. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m over the moon.”
The last phrase would have been familiar to Channon and his ilk from the 1970s.
It was a flourish that we used to hear virtually every Saturday night on BBC TV’s Match of the Day. And it made the progression from the mouths of footballers into the vernacular to suggest transcendant elation.
Conversely the set expression to epitomise rank injustice or abject misery became “sick as a parrot”.
Some inventive players tried to introduce some flair into the post-match analysis game with “mad as a dog” and some even tried “chuffed” to describe the joy of victory.
But while that sort of eloquence was welcome, they never made the journey into the public mind.
A couple of years ago, the Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard – dubbed one of the more articulate of his generation because he passed some exams at school - used the word “gutted” after a narrow loss.
I thought I detected a wry smile on his mouth but maybe that was the bitter taste of defeat.
Perhaps Lampard, who is deemed to be media savvy, was using it with a tad of post-modern irony.
Don’t think that’s the case for young Adlington. Her press conference responses suggested that she isn’t used to the attention.
But not even interviews with the Nottingham Evening Post will have prepared her for what she is going to start experiencing from now.
She’s a gold medallist in her first Olmpic games at the age of 19.
The only thing now is that the pressure will probably mount up on her to defend her title on home soil in Britain in four years time.
It’s all set up for a brilliant story on that angle. But my abiding memory will be of her and compatriot Jo Jackson - who got a bronze - just smiling and hugging each other for a good minute in the pool like two kids.
It was natural and sincere.
They’d got a result.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
The Rains
It had to happen. The rain that was predicted for Friday night’s opening ceremony extravaganza came to us on Sunday. And so rather than being grey and hot it is wet and grey.
I’m not yet sure which I prefer. But since it was damp I thought why not go and watch the swimming.
I would have probably done this even it had been the usual clammy humidity outside.
Off I squelched to the National Aquatics Centre which is also known as the Water Cube. This is one of the big buildings of these games. Designed by the Chinese State Construction International Company, Australia PTW Architects and ARUP Australia, it houses some 17,000 people.
And there was indeed a cacophony as the American Michael Phelps broke his own world record to take the 4x100m individual medley. It was the first of what he hopes will be a trawl of eight golds.
There was more screaming as Park Tae-Hwan won South Korea’s first Olympic swimming gold in the 400m freestyle.
And you can imagine the frenzy as the Chinese duo Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia retained their Olympic title in the synchronised three metre springboard diving.
A few days into the competitions and the hosts are racking up the gold medals. And who’d begrudge them that after laying on such a tremendous show.
What are also mounting are the clichés. Before we get anywhere near the track and field, there have been indignities uttered to the point where I've been forced to establish a measure.
So as the thermometer of competition rises, a “squirmometer” will monitor any post event triteness.
It’s not that the comments are untrue or offensive, they just make you wriggle in your set and raise your eyebrow a bit.
Perhaps it’s because the statements emerge in the hinterland of victory.
The Australian Stephanie Rice who took the gold medal in the 4x100 individual medley in a world record time seemed quite deft as she deflected questions about her relationship with the Australian swimmer Eamon Sullivan.
But then she talked about being “in the moment” in the pool.
OK. But Ugh.
The American swimmer Dara Torres anchored her team to silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay. She is 41 and many of the swimmers in Sunday’s race weren’t even born when she was competing in her first Olympics back in Los Angeles in 1984.
But her aquatic longevity – this is her fifth Olympics - hasn’t salvaged her from the ravages of the cliché. “Age is only a number,” she intoned.
True, she’s won 10 Olympic medals. But ugh.
“When we are in the water, it doesn’t matter because the water doesn’t really know how old you are when you hit the water.”
Eau dear.
I’m not yet sure which I prefer. But since it was damp I thought why not go and watch the swimming.
I would have probably done this even it had been the usual clammy humidity outside.
Off I squelched to the National Aquatics Centre which is also known as the Water Cube. This is one of the big buildings of these games. Designed by the Chinese State Construction International Company, Australia PTW Architects and ARUP Australia, it houses some 17,000 people.
And there was indeed a cacophony as the American Michael Phelps broke his own world record to take the 4x100m individual medley. It was the first of what he hopes will be a trawl of eight golds.
There was more screaming as Park Tae-Hwan won South Korea’s first Olympic swimming gold in the 400m freestyle.
And you can imagine the frenzy as the Chinese duo Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia retained their Olympic title in the synchronised three metre springboard diving.
A few days into the competitions and the hosts are racking up the gold medals. And who’d begrudge them that after laying on such a tremendous show.
What are also mounting are the clichés. Before we get anywhere near the track and field, there have been indignities uttered to the point where I've been forced to establish a measure.
So as the thermometer of competition rises, a “squirmometer” will monitor any post event triteness.
It’s not that the comments are untrue or offensive, they just make you wriggle in your set and raise your eyebrow a bit.
Perhaps it’s because the statements emerge in the hinterland of victory.
The Australian Stephanie Rice who took the gold medal in the 4x100 individual medley in a world record time seemed quite deft as she deflected questions about her relationship with the Australian swimmer Eamon Sullivan.
But then she talked about being “in the moment” in the pool.
OK. But Ugh.
The American swimmer Dara Torres anchored her team to silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay. She is 41 and many of the swimmers in Sunday’s race weren’t even born when she was competing in her first Olympics back in Los Angeles in 1984.
But her aquatic longevity – this is her fifth Olympics - hasn’t salvaged her from the ravages of the cliché. “Age is only a number,” she intoned.
True, she’s won 10 Olympic medals. But ugh.
“When we are in the water, it doesn’t matter because the water doesn’t really know how old you are when you hit the water.”
Eau dear.
Saturday, 9 August 2008
The Aftershock
With the opening ceremony for the games declared a success, those connected with it can rightly shine in the glory.
Zhang Yimou, the artistic director of the four hour extravaganza, said his workload was 100 times that of making a film.
And he's been doing epics of late.
He mused: “The films are personal works, the success of which matters only to the director. But directing the Olympic Games is totally different. It determines whether the Games get off to a successful start or not.”
So no pressure there then.
Yao Ming, who plays his basketball in the NBA with the Houston Rockets, seems to be revelling in his role as a giant among his compatriots. Well he is 7ft 2ins tall and he’s at ease with his role as a sponsor friendly conduit between China and the United States.
The two countries will play on Sunday. China are the underdogs so they have nothing to lose conceded Yao. “It won’t be easy but it will be an honour and a precious memory, one that will last a lifetime,” he added.
The 27 year old is at the centre of a team that’s not expected to do well.
The people who have it tough are the one’s who’ve been built up for this Olympic moment.
The 110 metres high hurdles champion Liu Xiang has cover boy good looks and the weight of a nation on his shoulders as he tries to leap over those obstacles.
His path to retaining his Olympic crown has been slightly eased because the Cuban, Dayron Robles, grabbed his world record in June.
No such leavening of the burden for the markswoman Du Li. She won gold in Athens four years ago in the 10m air rifle coming in ahead of the Russian Lioubov Galkina and the Czech Katerina Kurkova.
But on Saturday morning Du well and truly cracked. She slumped to overall fifth and fled the shooting range in tears without talking to the waiting pack.
When she’d stopped blubbing she revealed that the pressure of defending her title on home soil and of winning the first gold medal of the games had been too much. Much too much.
Kurkova – now Emmons - who won Saturday's event, told the vultures of the Chinese press: “You swarmed around her even in her training. I can’t bear that if I’m in that situation, so I can feel what Du must have felt.”
That will be the gold medal then.
Zhang Yimou, the artistic director of the four hour extravaganza, said his workload was 100 times that of making a film.
And he's been doing epics of late.
He mused: “The films are personal works, the success of which matters only to the director. But directing the Olympic Games is totally different. It determines whether the Games get off to a successful start or not.”
So no pressure there then.
Yao Ming, who plays his basketball in the NBA with the Houston Rockets, seems to be revelling in his role as a giant among his compatriots. Well he is 7ft 2ins tall and he’s at ease with his role as a sponsor friendly conduit between China and the United States.
The two countries will play on Sunday. China are the underdogs so they have nothing to lose conceded Yao. “It won’t be easy but it will be an honour and a precious memory, one that will last a lifetime,” he added.
The 27 year old is at the centre of a team that’s not expected to do well.
The people who have it tough are the one’s who’ve been built up for this Olympic moment.
The 110 metres high hurdles champion Liu Xiang has cover boy good looks and the weight of a nation on his shoulders as he tries to leap over those obstacles.
His path to retaining his Olympic crown has been slightly eased because the Cuban, Dayron Robles, grabbed his world record in June.
No such leavening of the burden for the markswoman Du Li. She won gold in Athens four years ago in the 10m air rifle coming in ahead of the Russian Lioubov Galkina and the Czech Katerina Kurkova.
But on Saturday morning Du well and truly cracked. She slumped to overall fifth and fled the shooting range in tears without talking to the waiting pack.
When she’d stopped blubbing she revealed that the pressure of defending her title on home soil and of winning the first gold medal of the games had been too much. Much too much.
Kurkova – now Emmons - who won Saturday's event, told the vultures of the Chinese press: “You swarmed around her even in her training. I can’t bear that if I’m in that situation, so I can feel what Du must have felt.”
That will be the gold medal then.
Friday, 8 August 2008
The Opening Ceremony
It started at eight and I wasn't late. How could I be late. I’d come to Beijing for this very date. The Olympics started big time at eight in the evening on the eighth.
This hour was chosen because eight is the luckiest number for the superstitiously minded basically because the the number eight sounds like the word for prosperity.
Sounds good to me. Four by contrast is the unluckiest number because it sounds like the Chinese word for death.
And do you know what…I’m in building four at the hotel complex.
Despite all the lucky numbers going for it, nothing about the opening ceremony was left to chance.
The cast of thousands who participated in the four hour extravaganza had been preparing for months. Five thousand years of Chinese culture were projected to us during the show.
The artistic director behind it all was Zhang Yimou and he’s no Johnny-cum-lately.
He’s the man who infused art house opacity with translucence. What does that mean?
I'm not entirely sure but it seems to sum up his output such as Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and the Story of Qiu Ju.
They were heavy with symbolism. I mean weighty. I remember watching Raise the Red Lantern when I lived in south London. I went to see it at one of the many art house cinemas that used to inhabit the city in the late 1980s.
The screen was sufficiently large so you could appreciate the symbolic moments.
The film was building to a crescendo of catastrophe and when some red dye spilt onto a white linen sheet, you just knew woe was a-coming.
That 58 year old Yimou had his hands on the wheels of our drive into wonderland was reassuring.
It turned out to be a visual feast. But then there was too much at stake for it to be left to something like luck.
This hour was chosen because eight is the luckiest number for the superstitiously minded basically because the the number eight sounds like the word for prosperity.
Sounds good to me. Four by contrast is the unluckiest number because it sounds like the Chinese word for death.
And do you know what…I’m in building four at the hotel complex.
Despite all the lucky numbers going for it, nothing about the opening ceremony was left to chance.
The cast of thousands who participated in the four hour extravaganza had been preparing for months. Five thousand years of Chinese culture were projected to us during the show.
The artistic director behind it all was Zhang Yimou and he’s no Johnny-cum-lately.
He’s the man who infused art house opacity with translucence. What does that mean?
I'm not entirely sure but it seems to sum up his output such as Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and the Story of Qiu Ju.
They were heavy with symbolism. I mean weighty. I remember watching Raise the Red Lantern when I lived in south London. I went to see it at one of the many art house cinemas that used to inhabit the city in the late 1980s.
The screen was sufficiently large so you could appreciate the symbolic moments.
The film was building to a crescendo of catastrophe and when some red dye spilt onto a white linen sheet, you just knew woe was a-coming.
That 58 year old Yimou had his hands on the wheels of our drive into wonderland was reassuring.
It turned out to be a visual feast. But then there was too much at stake for it to be left to something like luck.
Thursday, 7 August 2008
The Village
Roger Federer, the tennis world number one is enjoying his last few days as the planet’s best player in and around the Olympic Village.
The Swiss has ruled the roost for the past four and a half years. But on August 18 the Spaniard Rafael Nadal will supplant him.
Federer is in Beijing because he’s after Olympic Gold. He’s won lots of other major titles and he’s keen to triumph here.
For that reason he’s not staying in the village because he gets mobbed by the other athletes and it’s not the best way to steel yourself for the approaching duels.
Victory could revivify his season. Federer who’s 27 on Friday has been given the birthday present of carrying Switzerland’s flag at the opening ceremony on Friday night.
It’s the only significant honour he’s got his hands on of late. Beaten for the third year running by Nadal in the French Open final, Nadal then vanquished him in the Wimbledon final last month.
Federer has been abject in his appearances since that defeat on the lawns of south-west London while the Spaniard has been impressive going on to win another title in Toronto.
While the two titans of tennis prepare to take chunks out of each other yet again, other athletes are relaxing in the village before the white heat of competition begins on Saturday.
Calling it a village is misleading though. The word evokes images of quaint country lanes and chummy people chatting as lambs gently bleat in yonder pastures.
This village houses some 15,000 athletes from the 205 national Olympic associations worldwide. Olympic Babel would be more appropriate.
And it’s certainly not a village in the modern British sense of the word because there are shops open and they’re flourishing.
Myriad languages may be circulating but they can all communicate when it comes to buying.
And why not? For the general store (open 9am – 11pm) offers athletes the chance to take care of life’s little banalities before their battles for supremacy begin.
They can stock up on those cutesy gifts for friends and family back home in Kazakhstan or Mauritania.
After all who could resist a set of commemorative Beijing Olympic pins for 999 yuan (about 100 euros)?
If that’s a bit out of the price range then a simple mug for 28 yuan?
That’s so much more within my remit that I nearly bought one. I didn’t as I’d probably have tried to have a cup of tea in it at the traditional Chinese tea house just along from the general store.
I stood outside and perused a notice outlining the available brews – oolong, green tea, black tea and jasmine. So I peered in. A smiling woman – oh OK let’s call her a tealady – came out and engaged me in conversation.
She told me that there’d be a performance - oh OK let’s call it a teadance – a bit later in the afternoon.
She advised the 4pm show as that was the best time for tea.
“That’s when the British usually have a cup,” I beamed.
Moreover it’s the time when I usually have a cup. I used to get a brew called tarry souchong from the tea section at Harrods, it was a smoky number and it was excellent, problem was I found I was getting less and less time to savour it.
It’s not something for when you’re harried and that’s how I appear to be having tea at the moment.
I’m pretty sure the Chinese approach to tea is more rites driven than my present bag in a mug thrust into my mug. Theirs is a commodity I can buy into.
The Swiss has ruled the roost for the past four and a half years. But on August 18 the Spaniard Rafael Nadal will supplant him.
Federer is in Beijing because he’s after Olympic Gold. He’s won lots of other major titles and he’s keen to triumph here.
For that reason he’s not staying in the village because he gets mobbed by the other athletes and it’s not the best way to steel yourself for the approaching duels.
Victory could revivify his season. Federer who’s 27 on Friday has been given the birthday present of carrying Switzerland’s flag at the opening ceremony on Friday night.
It’s the only significant honour he’s got his hands on of late. Beaten for the third year running by Nadal in the French Open final, Nadal then vanquished him in the Wimbledon final last month.
Federer has been abject in his appearances since that defeat on the lawns of south-west London while the Spaniard has been impressive going on to win another title in Toronto.
While the two titans of tennis prepare to take chunks out of each other yet again, other athletes are relaxing in the village before the white heat of competition begins on Saturday.
Calling it a village is misleading though. The word evokes images of quaint country lanes and chummy people chatting as lambs gently bleat in yonder pastures.
This village houses some 15,000 athletes from the 205 national Olympic associations worldwide. Olympic Babel would be more appropriate.
And it’s certainly not a village in the modern British sense of the word because there are shops open and they’re flourishing.
Myriad languages may be circulating but they can all communicate when it comes to buying.
And why not? For the general store (open 9am – 11pm) offers athletes the chance to take care of life’s little banalities before their battles for supremacy begin.
They can stock up on those cutesy gifts for friends and family back home in Kazakhstan or Mauritania.
After all who could resist a set of commemorative Beijing Olympic pins for 999 yuan (about 100 euros)?
If that’s a bit out of the price range then a simple mug for 28 yuan?
That’s so much more within my remit that I nearly bought one. I didn’t as I’d probably have tried to have a cup of tea in it at the traditional Chinese tea house just along from the general store.
I stood outside and perused a notice outlining the available brews – oolong, green tea, black tea and jasmine. So I peered in. A smiling woman – oh OK let’s call her a tealady – came out and engaged me in conversation.
She told me that there’d be a performance - oh OK let’s call it a teadance – a bit later in the afternoon.
She advised the 4pm show as that was the best time for tea.
“That’s when the British usually have a cup,” I beamed.
Moreover it’s the time when I usually have a cup. I used to get a brew called tarry souchong from the tea section at Harrods, it was a smoky number and it was excellent, problem was I found I was getting less and less time to savour it.
It’s not something for when you’re harried and that’s how I appear to be having tea at the moment.
I’m pretty sure the Chinese approach to tea is more rites driven than my present bag in a mug thrust into my mug. Theirs is a commodity I can buy into.
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
The Cusp
Regular followers of the parislondonreturn might recall that I'm not the best of flyers.
I'm still not exactly sure when this antipathy started but I'm savvy enought to realise that one has to fly to go to places like – say China.
Though if I’d left Paris two weeks ago and used an array of trains and boats I might have arrived in Beijing at right about now.
That didn’t happen. And for a moment the journey here to Beijing from Paris was on the verge of not happening.
I turned up suitably early at Charles de Gaulle airport’s Terminal 1. And I waited with about half a dozen others in line. Eventually the China Airways ground staff appeared and nonchalantly opened up the aisles that we’d feed into.
Suitably basted with our Pavlovian cues, we shuffled into expectant order.
They then went away. I felt spurned. But not quite as rejected as the bulging suitcase that was in the queue.
Odd I thought, when did that turn up? More importantly why was no one with it?
Two passing airport executives clearly had the same reservations. They stopped, scanned and furrowed their brows. When I caught their frown I said: “I’ve just noticed that too. I saw a man with it.”
They waited a few minutes and eventually called airport security. A good five minutes had passed during which time the queue for checking onto CA 934 to Beijing had started moving.
But it wasn’t proceeding fast enough for me to get out of the way of a potential bomb.
I was just yards away.
What to do? Couldn’t exactly leave my bags and flee to the other side of the building. To run off while pushing my trolley would be terribly undignified, slow and defeat the purpose of trying to escape.
So I stayed and fretted. The suits talked into their phones and eventually a man returned. The suits became animated, the man gesticulated but didn’t exactly convey remorse.
How can you leave your bags unattended in this day and age? My initial concern would be someone stealing my dazzling range of desirable apparel. But in the wider context we live in an age of bombs.
But I’m being so yesteryear. These days people remain with their explosives. They are the devices.
And they’re known to prey on buses, underground trains, markets and bazaars.
Not just airports.
Well that takes care of my fear of flying. Now to tackle the plain fear of living.
I'm still not exactly sure when this antipathy started but I'm savvy enought to realise that one has to fly to go to places like – say China.
Though if I’d left Paris two weeks ago and used an array of trains and boats I might have arrived in Beijing at right about now.
That didn’t happen. And for a moment the journey here to Beijing from Paris was on the verge of not happening.
I turned up suitably early at Charles de Gaulle airport’s Terminal 1. And I waited with about half a dozen others in line. Eventually the China Airways ground staff appeared and nonchalantly opened up the aisles that we’d feed into.
Suitably basted with our Pavlovian cues, we shuffled into expectant order.
They then went away. I felt spurned. But not quite as rejected as the bulging suitcase that was in the queue.
Odd I thought, when did that turn up? More importantly why was no one with it?
Two passing airport executives clearly had the same reservations. They stopped, scanned and furrowed their brows. When I caught their frown I said: “I’ve just noticed that too. I saw a man with it.”
They waited a few minutes and eventually called airport security. A good five minutes had passed during which time the queue for checking onto CA 934 to Beijing had started moving.
But it wasn’t proceeding fast enough for me to get out of the way of a potential bomb.
I was just yards away.
What to do? Couldn’t exactly leave my bags and flee to the other side of the building. To run off while pushing my trolley would be terribly undignified, slow and defeat the purpose of trying to escape.
So I stayed and fretted. The suits talked into their phones and eventually a man returned. The suits became animated, the man gesticulated but didn’t exactly convey remorse.
How can you leave your bags unattended in this day and age? My initial concern would be someone stealing my dazzling range of desirable apparel. But in the wider context we live in an age of bombs.
But I’m being so yesteryear. These days people remain with their explosives. They are the devices.
And they’re known to prey on buses, underground trains, markets and bazaars.
Not just airports.
Well that takes care of my fear of flying. Now to tackle the plain fear of living.
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