"Surely you won't remember" I hear you say... well fear not! Every single moment, memory and conversation captured is still as clear as day!
So, day 6.. Wednesday - I had Tuesday off (yaaaaaaay) hence skipping a day on the blog!
Today we arrived as usual for our morning briefing under the lip of the aquatics centre roof. We were greeted by the ever so loud and flamboyant Mary (Staffing Manager) who instigated her usual morning "hokey kokey" dance followed by her own version of "heads, shoulders, knees and toes"!
Today we were given a horrible colour so as in true GM style we switched (again) to Pink with Michael as our Team Leader. Pink was Britannia Row - we were stationed by the Copper Box which held Goalball. We were at the end of the bridge and supposed to be in charge of controlling the traffic flow, as well as the normal CDM Games Maker duties of giving directions to venues, toilets, ticketing queries and of course not forgetting the big bowl shaped structure a.k.a. The Olympic Stadium! :-) We seem to be answering many, many questions every day and we must be close to nearly 2,012 questions!
As you can see from the photo I took above, the Copper Box (situated behind the big RUN sculpture which is a piece of the "Art in the Park") is not very copper looking - it is more black! One of the most common questions when stationed near the Copper Box seemed to be "Why is it called the copper box?". Well, it is called the Copper Box as the top half of the Copper Box is clad in 3,000 sq metres of external copper cladding which has been recycled. As it ages it will have a unique appearance that will develop a rich natural copper colour.
Just where we were was right by the programme stand so all day we could hear this young lady shouting "get your programmes" it was just like being on a market stall really. I think by the end of the day I was going to be dreaming about the special offer on programmes. The crowd control is probably one of the hardest things as you can imagine trying to get thousands of spectators to move to / walk down one side of the bridge right by the BBC studios was no mean feat especially when the security guys weren't exactly helping.
We all went off and had our lunch breaks. As the temperature was slowly increasing there began to be a sever lack of cold food selections in the workforce dining area - this lead to me having the same thing for about 4 days... Falafel and Humous Salad, followed by the obligatory Banana, bottle of drink and of course the trusty Nature Valley bar!
At the end of our shift we all decided to go for a drink one of the bars just outside of the park. We ended up going to the outdoors Heineken bar which had a large screen showing C4's coverage of the Games. There was a few of us so we sat down on one of the picnic bench tables as you can see from the photo below.
We stayed for several hours and had many conversations with passers by, spectators, staff and even athletes from Cameroon. Towards the end of the evening our party size was dwindling and there was just Laura, Matt and I left. We chatted and spoke to the Athletes from Cameroon as you can see below.
We then got chatting to various members of the RAF and Royal Navy. It was so surreal just turning round and having conversations with the Armed Forces. Sometimes you forget that they are just "normal people" too! They were drinking Pimms and we pitched in and bought them a couple of pitchers just to say thanks for all that they have done over the London 2012 Games. Many people didn't realise these serving members of the armed forces gave up their leave and time off to stay at Hainault and commute down to Stratford every day at 4.00am on coaches to man the security gates - they often worked over 16 hour shifts with very few breaks!
All in all it was another great day and ended off nicely by spending time relaxing and chatting to various people who were also very humbled by all the volunteers efforts at the Games.
Until next time and thanks for reading... x
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