BORIS'S BUS SCULPTURE TRAIL...PART II

What do you do with Olympic sites after the Olympics? Turn them into a white elephant a-la Homebush in Sinney? Not here in London, where the lord mayor cleverly designed one of his bus sculpture trails through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park precinct. A couple of salient points:

Wandering through the myriad high rise apartment blocks formerly occupied by competitors is akin to walking through a pristine ghost town. There are hundreds of them and they're all empty. BUT - they all happen to be sold and even more are under construction. Owners cannot occupy the premises for another 12 months and so apart from cleaners - and me - there's nobody there.

There are unusual sculptures in the parks, one made out of disused IKEA plastic bag dispensers!

The Aquatic Centre, Lee Valley Velodrome and main stadium are magnificent. The main stadium is undergoing a facelift (already!) for the 2105 Rugby World Cup and once that is over the stadium will be exclusively handed over to West Ham United for the next 99 years in a deal worth 500 million quid!! Bobby Moore and Alf Garnett would roll in their graves. Jeez, I hope they never get relegated from the Premier League!

Lee Valley Velopark

Copper Box Arena - can't work out how it got its name!

Paralympics Presentation Dais

A big day for Team GB

 

Main stadium

Aquatics Centre

The coffee at the Timber Lodge Cafe was appalling! And this'll tickle you; one of the buses is directly outside the cafe, so I asked the young sales lady which way to go to the next one. Not only did she not know where the next one was, she didn't realise there was one outside her front door!!

Access is superb via the Stratford Underground, Overground and International train stations.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit is amazing. It's the tallest sculpture in the UK, towering over the main stadium and the observation deck provides unparalleled views of the precinct and East London.

But here's the real genius of the whole development - take a bow Frank Lowy! When you exit the station (and there is only one way out!!!) you find yourself smack dab in the middle of Westfield Stratford City! Now that's what I call Australian ingenuity; I wonder how much it cost to organise that!

Anyway, enjoy the buses. My fave is the last one.

 

Ding! Ding! (Crispin Finn)

Moquette (Beth Quinton)

Journey To Anywhere (Oliver Dean)

Time Travel (Sara Adhitya)

English Herbaceous Border (Sarah Jane Richards)

Hold Tight (Jane Headford)

Union Jack (Kristian Movahed)

The Paralympic Bus (Tom Yendell)

Invisible To The Environment (Pawel Srokowski)

Who Dat???

Dazzler (Sophie Green)

CumulonimBUS - geddit!!! (Loz Atkinson

THE GAME PLAYED IN HEAVEN - OR IN THIS CASE, TWICKENHAM

Some sporting events transcend the norm. Attending an AFL Grand Final at 'The G', the Boxing Day Test also at the MCG, the F.A. Cup Final, the Wimbledon Final, or the Melbourne Cup is an experience never to be forgotten. Last Saturday, the LegsyBoys (sans Dulcinea who was tangoing in Buenos Aires) were fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to attend on of UK sport's great moments - the rugby Test between England and The Wallabies at the mighty Twickenham Stadium. We set off under crystal clear skies and arrived at Twickenham station to join the 10 minute walking migration to the stadium.

Please note - He's wearing short sleeves on 29th November!

Looking confident

The kids were awestruck at the size of the crowd, officially 82,031, and the playing pitch. Absolutely everything about the afternoon was superbly handled, and the rugby crowd is probably the most respectful I have ever experienced. Members of the armed services carried out giant flags

before an extraordinarily emotional tribute was paid to fallen cricketer Phil Hughes. As a video tribute was shown on all the screens, the entire stadium joined as one in something I've not seen done before, a minute of applause (and with hindsight, how appropriate a way to acknowledge and farewell a sportsman) - I can feel tears in my eyes as I'm typing this.

Advance Australia Fair was played and robustly sung by the LegsyBoys and the smattering of Aussies in the crowd who knew the words to our national anthem, and then came the most spine tingling event of the day - listening to what was effectively a massed choir of 80,000 Englishmen singing God Save Our Queen was exhilarating, 'hair standing up on the neck' stuff that even Aimee and Liam were in awe of. We recorded it but unfortunately Don L has no idea how to attach a sound file to the blog! And then it was down to business.

The 'Sirs'

The game was terrific, even if the result was not what we wanted.

We're off.....

The good guys were in front after three minutes

Beauty - we're in front early!

but with two penalty goals England took the lead after 15 minutes and were never headed for the rest of the day, finally running out winners 26-17. The Wallabies dominated general possession and had a three quarter line that was at times scintillating.

Beauty, we're 'in' under the posts.

However, our forwards were SMASHED by their English counterparts as we fell to our third defeat in a row.

A line-out win....

...but this was more typical!

Scrum packs down......

....try! Way too easy.

 

The final nail. 26-17

The same story has been repeated in almost all the games of this six Test tour, and although I know little about the intricacies of the game, it is painfully clear that the forward set-up needs to be addressed before next year's World Cup.

We came out of the stadium at 4:30pm to darkness and joined the happy horde on the trek back to the station. It was a fabulous day and one we all enjoyed immensely. It would be very remiss of us not to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Sean Hammond back in Canberra who arranged everything for us.

Muchas Gracias Sean (the kids' signs are a bit hard to read)

As Sean said to us a few weeks ago - "it may well be the most culturally significant event you attend on your European sabbatical". It's difficult not to agree.