An Evening on the Thames

Friday, 27 July

I have watched the London 2012 Opening Ceremony twice on TV, and I think it is pretty much the most brilliant spectacle I have ever seen. I would like to see a DVD version at half speed which breaks down and explains every cultural reference in the programme. After 14 years in London, I probably got about half of what was on offer. The overwhelming impression is how many legends — not just celebrities — but legendary icons, float along through the stream of British culture. Danny Boyle just kept nailing them one after another as the show proceeded. What does it mean to be British has been a question much in public debate over the past decade as the Labour Prime Ministers, Blair and the Brown, who promised so much, brought such disappointment during their terms in office. Humour, self-deprecation, adaptability, and creativity quickly spring to mind. I found the Beijing opening ceremony to be a bit creepy with thousands of robotic performers mesmerizing the crowds. Danny Boyle's thousands of performers did just the opposite, fomenting an explosion of creative chaos with the audience of billions experiencing successive moments of joy, pathos, comedy, terror, and grief. Although I gather US audiences missed out on the grief segment by the substitution of an interview with an inarticulate swimmer for the stunning dance choreographed by Akram Khan accompanied by Emeli Sandé's lovely rendition of Abide With Me (which I read is an anthem sang at rugby competitions in the UK). This website has posted the segment that was cut by NBC.

We didn't see the Opening Ceremony until Saturday morning because we had booked a cruise on a tall ship to commemorate the Olympics. The Royal Greenwich Festival included a parade of tall ships that will remain docked in Woolwich through the Olympics. The original plan was to offer high priced dinner cruises aimed at businesses wishing to entertain clients. But guess what? Surprise, surprise, freebie offers like this breach recent bribery legislation so the ships were left with no takers. They cleverly came up with a new marketing plan to sell tickets for 2-hour cruises on the Thames. Since the Opening Ceremony was to have fireworks, some bright light came up with the idea of extending the cruise to wait for the fireworks. The ceremony ran nearly four hours so we wound up, freezing cold and on the water until nearly 1:30 in the morning!

When I saw the opening segment of the Opening Ceremony with its trip down the Thames from source to mouth, I was happy we had been on the river while it was first broadcast.

Boarding the tall ship Thalassa, a Dutch ship from Harlingen

Passing through the Thames Barrier that prevents London from flooding
during tidal surges, but not if the Greenland glaciers keep melting this quickly.

Canary Wharf

Our very newest Thames crossing transport: the Emirates
Airline Cable Car from the Millennium Dome . . . 

. . . to the Victorian Docks

The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich,
last seen here on the blog as the Australia Stage at the River of Music

Security and the source of . . .

. . .  black helicopters scanning the skies

Another of the fleet of tall ships

Although we had to motor in the Thames, the crew raised
 some of the sails 

Tower Bridge with its Olympic lights. At one point we thought we would not make it to the  Bridge
because the Captain was told the river was closed to traffic. Later when we began moving,
we learned the river was closed so David Beckham could bring the speedboat
carrying the torch across the river to the Olympic Park

At long last the single set of fireworks we could see.
 The Olympic Park is not near the Thames.

Fortunately we made it onto the trains and Tubes that were running until 2:30 in the morning for this event. Everyone else on the train at that time was an Olympic volunteer coming from the Ceremony. After watching it on TV, Bob remembered one of the women was carrying a pail, which seemed odd to him at the time, but he realised she must have been one of the 1000 volunteer drummers!