I’ve always hoped that the Olympics would be a success, but didn’t actually expect them to be when the bid was successful. Seems that I was wrong; they’ve been pretty decent all round. Of course, one of the reasons I was against them was cost, and that reason still holds as a vote against them, but the travel chaos and all that didn’t happen. Well done Seb Coe for being just the right dictator to get things done.

So, what did we do during the festivities? Well, we went to see the torch relay, because it was pretty much on the way to the station and only caused a short delay in getting to work.

We put in applications months ago to go see things at the Olympics, and failed in most of our attempts. Although we did manage to see some horses doing sensible stuff – jumping makes sense, while getting a horse to dance clearly does not.

And then we went up into town to watch a bit of the men’s marathon. It was quite entertaining, and because they do it on a looped course rather than all strung out you got to see more of how it developed. Which was interesting.

And that was it; our Olympic experience. Not too much, really.

Our Paralympic Experience has been a bit more interesting, though.

In short: dozens of medals, lots of them GB but a nice silver for Ireland as well. Lots of very interesting moments, like Mr Pistoris getting hammered in the 100m. Some great stories, like the sprinter who collapsed at 50m and then insisted in struggling over the line about a minute after everyone else just to collapse the other side of it again. The javelin thrower who ended up being in the wrong category because of a paperwork issue, and instead of giving up he just decided to compete in said category anyway – rather difficult considering he’d been in a wheelchair all his life and the competition rules require he do it standing up.

All in all, a rather nice way to spend some time, we thought…