Olympics resolution number one: be nice to people

I’ll be honest – I’m an Olympics grump. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching people jump over things, kick balls, throw spears and race each other, although please don’t make me watch dressage – but the whole corporate, big money, delirious patriotism for sports no one particularly watches and authoritarian overtones of the event has got me pouting, frowning and tutting.

Sport and flag waving seem to me incompatible. It’s difficult to enjoy top athletes at the peak of their game when I’m being morally pressured to support one team or another, or one runner or another regardless of playing style, character or back story.

Coming from the same place as me can be mildly interesting but this obsession with automatically supporting some rower or another on the back of it seems a bit weird. I know, that’s just me.

Anyway, while the police are busy guarding the flame, the soldiers are happily polishing their missiles and Seb Coe is locked away in a bunker somewhere cuddling large sacks of sponsorship money there’s the rest of us stuck in traffic, jammed on the tube or simply stuck on the pavement behind someone with a canoe strapped to their back. It’s enough to make a reasonable man tetchy – and I’m not in the slightest bit reasonable as a general rule.

Blame the right people

However, while gritting your teeth as you’re trapped between Olympic tourists who don’t know not to block the left of the escalator, it’s worth bearing in mind who is to blame for all this. Yes, Ken Livingstone. Well, also the IOC, Seb Coe, the Met Police, Tony Blair and quite frankly anyone else I can think of who brought this on us – I’ll forgive David Beckham but that’s where I draw the line.

The people who are definitely not to blame are the sportsmen and women, the minimum wage workers and volunteers, the torch relay supporters and the paying public. They didn’t decide that you couldn’t bring a packed lunch into the games, or that if you lay sausages out in a certain way that’s copyright infringement and the firing squad is on its way. They didn’t muck up the traffic system, they’re suffering it too.

All of this mean it’s time to make a resolution: be nice to people. Obviously, once the Games are over we can go back to shoving each other out of the way, barging onto the tube before everyone has got off and snarling at anyone who has the temerity to walk at a slower pace than us. All fair and reasonable, but if we’re to survive the gridlock and chaos over the next few weeks we’ll have to mentally shift a gear and just… relax.

That lost Paraguayan family standing in the middle of the pavement ? Let’s stop and help them out. The Japanese tourist with the over-sized suitcases on wheels? Go ahead and help them up the steps, whether that’s the way they’re going or not. In fact where-ever there is someone in need, let’s take a couple of minutes to make their trip to London less intolerable.

I don’t know, maybe you do that anyway. If so “good for you”. I suppose.

Because whatever the trials and tribulations of being the host city of the world’s favourite ring branded sports day that’s no reason to take it out on those who may well be having a trip they’ve saved for. I’m going to try not to spoil anyone’s enthusiasm for being in the greatest city on Earth just because they’re only here because of the bloody Olympics.