Tag: off topic

Hello.

This blog is on hold for a couple of weeks.

Overnight on Saturday, into Sunday morning, my step-mum passed away. I won’t go into the details but it was a shock and we are taking time to be with each other.

In a bit of unfortunate timing, my sister is due to be married on Sunday. After taking advice from everyone she and her fiance have bravely decided to continue.

And the funeral will come in a couple of weeks, as the coroner may need to investigate.

After the wedding when a sense of routine returns and I go back to work, whenever that is, I will need my hobby to keep me occupied in the evenings. The blog posts will return when I’m ready. I was able to watch the Paris Formula E race, for example, but I won’t be watching Baku Formula 1 or anything else for a little while.

I will watch a lot less live in the near-to-medium future. We will probably be using weekends for other things. This means a significant reduction in live Twittering. For example, the timing of the funeral and other events means I will not be providing live Twitter coverage of Indy 500 qualifying, as had been planned. It doesn’t feel very important right now.

On the positive side this break may provide an opportunity to rethink how I use social media and this blog.

Take care of yourselves.

Pat.

 

Excuse the off-topic post but I don’t get this chance very often. The Olympic Games are being held in my home country and I cannot wait. There are all manner of problems with it, some of which are quite worrying, some of which are just people moaning because that’s what British people do! Once the Games begin I fully expect it’ll all be pushed to one side and we can all enjoy the pure contests of sporting prowess.

To those in the UK who wish it would go away: Tough. You’ve had SIX YEARS to save up and book a two week holiday anywhere else in the world. You chose not to. Lump it!

To everyone else: I’ll be tweeting away during the Opening Ceremony on Friday night (9pm BST/UK I believe) which I’ll likely be watching from home, join me won’t you? Before that though, I get to attend the very first event of the Games – women’s football in Cardiff at 4pm BST TODAY, Wednesday July 25th. I can’t guarantee tweets or the like but I’ll try. I’ll also be paying a visit to London on Thursday but I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to see anything. I certainly have no tickets in London until the Paralympics in September. Perhaps I’ll hunt down the torch relay.

I’ll borrow a phrase from Pressdog, I’m posting the next two vids for schwerve-generating purposes.

This has been airing on BBC channels for the last few weeks. It is perfect.

[ BBC, music ‘First Steps’ specially composed by Elbow, long version here ]

And this is the Official Song of the London 2012 Games..

[ IOCMedia / Muse – ‘Survival’ ]

What an epic, anthemic, self-mockingly ridiculous song! Muse have always had this OTT sense of humour and it really comes across here, and yet it is also very motivational. Yes it is stupid, yes it is ridiculous, but it is also perfect and oh so much better than the dirge that often comes out as an official song for these sorts of events. Kudos to LOCOG for choosing so differently.

If you were to mix the band Queen with a dash of the old WTCC theme, and put Wario on vocal..

Anyway I don’t care what people say. This is going to be great.

I’ll be at the women’s football in Cardiff, then in two weeks I’ll be at the men’s triathlon trying to find a space to watch in Hyde Park. The sailing venue in Weymouth is very close to me, just half an hour, so perhaps I’ll find myself down there once or twice!
In September I’ll be wandering the ExCel arena marvelling at sitting volleyball and table tennis before heading to Brands Hatch to watch Alex Zanardi compete in the handcycle race.

Did you get tickets? What will you be seeing?