Concrete pencil

By John Hill on April 10, 2008 8:59 AM |

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Concrete Pencil - Olympic musings from the lofty desk of Dan Bourke

WE could see the orange flame of the torch from the 22nd floor.

The Olympic bus stopped up Churchill Place, and then the sinister blue tracksuits were turning left by Credit Suisse, where we once handed out papers with the latest on the Flaming Ferraris.

We’d watched it on Sky all morning – monks and coppers, green parka protesters waving their banners – and we’d all agreed we’d go down there.

Some of us wanted to boo or do something more – and who can blame them? Who isn’t for a free Tibet?

For me though, it was more a case of just wanting to witness something big happening.

It’s tragic, that need. Like that feeling you got when you’re off sick from school when everyone’s going on a school trip. And it’s no more edifying than fearing you’d missed Ray Mears on the telly.

It’s the same with Glastonbury. I’m registered and I’m not buying a ticket. And when I see it on TV in June I’m going to be popping mad with jealousy.

But I’m not going. It’s not Jay-Z by the way. Jay-Z is very good. And if you can’t find music that will blow your cider-addled mind 24 hours a day at the Best Thing About Britain festival, you don’t deserve to call yourself a fan of anything.

It’s not the rain either. Now that the pain of sludging 14 miles a day in wellingtons has finally subsided, I enjoy the memories of nights of ludicrously hard rainfall. And this year they’ll get uninterrupted sun, it’s guaranteed.

I’m not going for loads of other reasons.

It’s always been such a hassle to get a ticket, getting down there and back is a pain in the arse, I want to give other festivals a go, I’m skint, I’m fed up of Radio 1 loving the festival, and posh people in fancy clothes, and loads of my friends aren’t going.

Soon-to-be-actual Mrs Concrete Pencil certainly isn’t.

She doesn’t have that thing with the torch, where she’d want to be near it just because its passing by is a big occasion. In fact, she goes out of her way to avoid things like that.

In the end on Sunday, word went round the floor that they’d locked the doors downstairs, which gave everyone the excuse they needed to be lazy and stay put.

There didn’t seem too much chance of a ruckus in the Independent Island Colony of Canary Wharf anyway.

So we peered down and the flame seemed surprisingly big.
Then we wondered who was carrying it.
Then we went and sat down again.