The Olympic Torch Comes To Tooting!

Okay, so it’s been quite a while since the typed word has graced the screen of the Thoughtfully Tooting blog. So, what a better way to return than with something that is actually thoughtfully Tooting. 

Yesterday on the 25th July, I arrived back in Tooting after another weary day at work, only to find the streets lined with people all rather mysteriously facing in the same direction. I remembered that this was to be the day the Olympic Torch came to Tooting, something that I had thought I couldn’t really care less about.

It’s fire. Something that I will generally come across everyday, so I thought it was rather odd to wait patiently in the street to see some flame go pass for less than a minute.

I sat in my bedroom, wondering if I could be bothered, though then realised I didn’t really have any excuse to not walk 5 minutes down my road to witness the embodiment of the Olympic Spirit. 

And I have to say it was rather nice. It was cool to have something create a buzz in my hometown and see loads of people in the turn out for something that was unambiguously good natured. It was warm and happy – something that could only be good for the community. It works because we want it to work. We turn out to see the torch because we do want to enjoy ourselves and we all feed of the communal joy surrounding us.

What people don’t realise when it is on the TV is that the Torch is preceded by a procession of commercialism. First there was Samsung in their blue party bus, full of attractive young people jumping up and down, saying things like “make some noise!” – the crowd responded in kind with yelps and huzzahs. Then there was the Coke bus, which did more or less the same thing, though with a slightly swankier vehicle (plus they gave out coke on occasion) – again, crass commercialism was not going to bring down the warmth and love of this once in a time community event. 

Then the Lloyd’s TSB bus went pass. The crowd went dead.

“Come you can do better then that!” said the poor man tasked with whipping the crowd into an Olympic fervour at the sight of a moving bank. I could see him force a smile as he reflected on the impossibility of drumming up a party atmosphere at the sight of the most boring (and at times shameful) aspect of British life. Samsung makes smartphones! Who doesn’t like those? And Coke makes drinks that you can mix with booze! Banks just remind you of debt, mortgages, credit crunch, obligations, evictions, bailouts, bankruptcy, etc… 

Well… at least it wasn’t a Barclay’s bus.