After all the hype, the Olympics are here.

Yippee! Yes, sorry tough for all you sports haters, but the Olympics have arrived. And if you hate the whole thing, well tough. Its your own money you are wasting by not embracing it. Its coming out of your taxes, so you might as well enjoy it.

Like it seems most of the country I tuned into the Opening Ceremony hoping it would be something good. And it certainly was. What I loved was just how clever it all was, The James Bond bit, the Rowan Atkinson slot, the cauldron have all been much remarked upon, but the transformation of rural idyll to industrial revolution was just so clever, and so ambitious. The satanic mills shooting up, the fields being rolled away. And seeing the Olympic rings being "forged" in the furnace and then hoisted up and showering fireworks. (Pics below of course nicked off the internet!)

And of course I was going to like the whizz through the last 40 years of popular music. And the Arctic Monkeys appearing. The NHS slot was a bit PC and slightly shovelled in (yeah ok to like the NHS but healthcare isn't really such a unique thing - most of the rest of Europe manages to look after its sick and would just take it for granted. Should the Post Office or the Inland Revenue appear next time we do one of these?). I am not sure what the rest of the world would have made of it as it was very British. But like everyone else, I have to hand it to Danny Boyle. A creative masterstroke. I even loved the parade of athletes (as I always do). I only actually got bored by the set pieces at the end - the speeches, the passing the torch to the young athletes only for them to do another run round, and most cringe worthy of all, the carrying of the flag by worthies. It became a tedious bit of name-dropping - how many hangers on could get into the act, and have a bit of glory reflected upon them.

 But if I was looking for a little bit of a controversial comment, I felt the much vaunted passing on to the next generation as symbolised by the torch lighting didn't reflect the reality of the ceremony in a few particular ways. One was having Muhammad Ali as part of the ceremony. He is clearly well out of it, a poor shambling wreck of a man now - he had to be manhandled about. Which strikes me as pretty undignified.

Secondly, can we please stop wheeling out Paul McCartney at every major do? And finally the ceremony did make me think that maybe its time for the Queen to pass on the baton. For the first time seeing her there she did look like what she is, a very elderly lady.

But so much for the opening. Saturday was my first day of being able to watch everything on the BBC, but I found being able to watch everything at the touch of a button just a little overwhelming as I flicked between cycling, women's basketball, beach volleyball, swimming, boxing, etc. The cycling road race was the most difficult to watch - the British interest being outweighed by the staggering dullness of following it. Hours of basically just watching traffic.

And Sunday was my first day of actually attending an event - the tennis at Wimbledon. Now to say I feel hard done by would be an understatement. I had excellent seats. It was a lovely morning. If you haven't been to Wimbledon, well it looks like this.

 Here is Henman Hill, ie the big screen for those without centre court tickets.

It was easy to get through security. And we had the chance to go past the practice courts, allowing us to get a few photos of the stars, Murray, Federer and the British girls Watson and Robson who had just sneaked into the draw.

The order of play included Djokevic followed by Venus Williams. So what went wrong? The weather of course. The forecast of showers in no way reflected the reality. Thunder and lightning and a really long persistent bout of rain through the afternoon. We got just under an hour's play, and very intriguing play too with Djokevic looking the better player but not managing to overcome the dogged Italian Fabio Fognini, before the rain came on during a lengthy tie-break.

The umpire frankly called it wrong by letting the tie-break continue, as all that happened was rain turned into a torrent and they couldn't complete the tie break anyway, but not before giving the court a good dousing. When the rain stopped and the sun reappeared, rather than dashing to get the game going again they dawdled to an official restart time and didn't get the covers off to allow the strong (if temporary) sunshine to dry the court. And no sooner had they got the court all set up, but the rain came again. And stayed until about half-past six. This allowed time for Djokevic to lose the tie-break but go on to win the last two sets quite comfortably, with both players slipping around on the court.

Beautiful blue sky as the sun went down, but too late, and the umpire decided that the court was too damp to be worth starting the second match. So frustrating that the only bad weather was the exact spell in the afternoon over which we could have been watching tennis. So Saturday was perfect, Monday should be fine, Sunday morning was bright and Sunday evening was peerless. Only the bloody bit for which I had tickets was awful!

So, by rights I should be irritable and looking for a cat to kick to a new workd record distance. But I am not. Not just because of my wonderful temperament. But (almost entirely) because my boss's son had taken up my spare ticket. And so rather several hours on my own I spent it happily chatting with this engaging young man. Obviously tinged with envy at him being two years into a degree at Durham rather than me celebrating getting to 50. But to my surprise we found plenty to talk about. Which was pretty necessary as there wasn't a lot to see! So thanks Oliver. A lot.