Celebrations

On the 6 July last year London was awarded the 2012 Olympics. I remember I had gone out to get something just as they were about to make the announcement and I knew that London had been awarded the Olympics because I heard some cheering from a nearby building site. There was much celebration across London and the news started to report on the plans for making sure that everything was ready for seven years time.

But less than 24 hours later the celebrations came to an abrupt halt when bombs exploded in London. I’ll say more about that tomorrow, but I’ve had to put a bit of preparation in to planning for tomorrow because I am announcing the midday two-minute silence at work. Given that on Remembrance Day last year the person who was meant to do it didn’t make the announcement at work, I had a discussion with a couple of people and agreed to do it this time. Every Friday we test the fire alarm and someone has to make an announcement to say it is going to happen, so last Friday they asked me to go and announce it over the voice address system so that I could practice for tomorrow. It was very nerve-racking, over 2000 people work in the building so that was in the back of my mind and I could feel my hands shaking when I made the announcement, even though all I was doing was reading off a sheet of paper. I found it much harder to do that than to do my normal public speaking, I’m not sure why, but I was much more nervous. But I used my best BBC English and tried not to trip over my words. I did actually used to make quite a lot of the announcements at work, as part of some things that I do that are in addition to my normal job, but I haven’t had to make any announcements for over a year so I am a bit out of practice.

I don’t generally worry about travelling on the tube. I am usually more concerned about having a quick kip or reading a book. But tomorrow I think I will plan to be off the tube before 8.50am (the time the explosions happened on the tube). Not that I think anything is going to happen, I would just rather have finished my tube journey and be back in the open air. I suspect the tube will be much less busy than normal anyway, as I think a lot of people will either travel in at a different time or have taken the day off. We’ll see. Although having said that I may have to stay in a hotel tonight I might be working really late and then have to be back in work early tomorrow morning. So I may not be on the tube at all.

But on a more light-hearted note and perhaps one that I should take more to heart ‘just in case’, apparently today is National Kissing Day. I’m not sure if that means you’re meant to just approach anyone and give them a quick peck or if you could use it as an excuse to kiss that person you’ve fancied for ages but have never plucked up the courage to pursue before. Mind you “how about going out for a drink?” might be less risky than trying to kiss them in the stationary cupboard, but maybe I’m just showing my risk averse nature. Most of our stationary is actually kept in a filing cabinet drawer and that could just get plain complicated if you tried to kiss someone in that. Anyway, use the day wisely and there are probably some wise words about kissing a few frogs, but I wouldn’t recommend it as someone might call the RSPCA.