My thoughts on seeing it last night:
Getting there I travelled by tube from the City, which was about as painful as I had imagined it would be - it was so rammed that I didn't even have space to read my Kobo! The short journey was given a comedy moment for those passengers standing with me in the vestibule area of the carriage I was travelling in. I was one of 6 or 7 people stood right in the door, hunched over. It was blindingly obvious that there was no more room. At Mile End a mother waiting with her three small children (aged between 6 and 10 at a guess) decided to replicate that famous Japanese technique of cramming even more people onto a train by brute force. Bellowing 'make room!' she pushed her kids onto the train. There was a lot of swearing (under the breath of course) from those already onboard as she slowly managed to force them into what little space there was. Sadly for the four of them, the bell sounded and the doors closed, knocking her arms aside and leaving her standing on the platform and her children inside the train.
As I walked into the Olympic Park there were a lot of warnings about 'prepare for airport style security checks'. Thusly I prepared myself to stand in a zig-zag line for an interminable time as crying children manage to bring time to a standstill, only to be ignored or treated to a grunt at best whilst going through the checks. Not so. I can see why they say 'airport
style' security, because of the familiar metal detector and bag x-ray, however that is where the similarity ended. The pace of progress was astounding. The RAF personnel staffing the point I went through were courteous, friendly and highly efficient. Just goes to show what happens when you actually put enough staff on duty at the same time.
The stadium is quite cool and the centrepiece is very impressive, though different to what I imagined from it's description. My only criticisms are the usual impossibility of sitting comfortably if you are over 5'5", that the big screens (which are essential) are difficult to see thanks to lots of aerial cameras and stuff, though I do recognise that my seat was particularly unlucky in this respect - others would have an unrestricted view.
The first part of the show started out as 'pretty damn cool' but rapidly turned to '£27million? What the hell has Danny-bloody-Boyle spent it on, this is rubbish'. The answer came about 40minutes later in the form of part two, which is best described as jaw-droppingly-good. It is difficult to articulate how good it is, especially without actually describing it, but
damn its good! Part three is a little weaker, though my not-MiL enjoyed it a lot more than me as she 'got' far more of it than I did.
I took some pictures for you all:
#savethesurprise
