TSDOAL2012OV – Black and White

Things have been getting pretty busy all week in the run up to the Opening Ceremony, but the main issue is still the unbelievable surplus of volunteers. I realise they don’t pay us and therefore lose nothing by having 4 of us standing at the same bus stop all telling the media that they should get on the bus to go to where they want to be, but unless we are intending on entering some kind of barbershop quartet talent contest, our voices in unison are somewhat unnecessary.

It has got to the extent that some volunteers are given the role of “crossing supervisors”, which involves them standing at zebra crossings making sure people get across them safely.
I don’t know about you but a zebra crossing supervisor seems to actually negate the point of the zebra crossing in the first place, if anything cancelling it out and making the crossing MORE DANGEROUS. That it has come to a point where people are assigned to making sure a ZEBRA CROSSING is doing its job properly, despite zebra crossings having generally been successful for a good number of years now, has made me realise two things:

1. I don’t need to be here.
2. Foreign media are going to be terrified of using zebra crossings around the city when there is no attendant to be seen. Therefore, if in your daily wanderings around London Town you see a terrified foreign person with a media pass round their neck standing at the edge of a zebra crossing staring down at it with trepidation as if it were a 300ft precipice over a large volcano full of spikes, please wait until there are no cars coming then give them a friendly shove onto it and film the outcome.

On the plus side it has been SWELTERING, a word which I have realised does not make it into the core English-as-a-foreign-language curriculum in most countries judging by the blank looks on most of the journalists faces when I say “isn’t it sweltering today!” so instead I just started wiping my brow with a lot of “phew!” sounds and that seems to elicit the polite chuckles that I relish so deeply. I really only realised far too late how much this job is reducing my pleasure threshold. I’m easy to please at the moment people, take advantage!