"At the touch of a Button"

The media do love to take a pop at banks. Whether it is banker’s bonuses, overdraft charges or miss-selling, the knives frequently come out, as they did this week over miss-selling of identity theft protection. Despite working in banking for over thirty years, I do accept that a lot of the criticism is valid, but I also know that if my experiences are anything to go by the majority of people working for banks want to offer customers a good service, are disappointed and sometimes embarrassed when things go wrong, and are quick to accept it when that happens and to put it right.

Over the years a popular theme for media criticism has been account switching, when the factoid that you are more likely to be divorced than to change your bank account is trotted out, usually without any figures to back up the statement. Some credence may be attributed to the statement on the basis that the average length of a marriage, as calculated by the Office of National Statistics[1], was eleven years in 2010, whereas the Independent Banking Commission found that on average, account holders change their bank account every twenty six years. To put these statistics into a different context, in 2011 there were 117,558 divorces recorded in the UK, whilst in 2012 a whopping 1,200,000 people switched their bank account. As ever with statistics, you pay your money and chose the ones that prove your point.

The common criticism when it comes to switching bank accounts is that banks make it difficult for people to do so; Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said so on The Andrew Marr Show last year, so it must be true. Presumably then, Mr Balls will be pleased with the Current Account Switch Service being introduced into the banking industry in September. The Payments Council, who are behind this initiative, intend that this will enable banks to deliver a “seamless, hassle-free switching service” completed within seven working days. One of the factors in this is that whereas it has always been the task of the banks to ensure that Direct Debits and Standing Orders are transferred across automatically, the notification to Remitters of a Beneficiary’s new bank details was the responsibility of the account holder, but this has now passed to the banks.[2]

There are people, Conservative MPs for example, who would go one step further and require account number portability, i.e. an account number for life that would follow customers from bank to bank. I’m not sure what sort of world that people who propose this sort of thing inhabit, but presumably it is equipped with nice padded walls and no sharp implements. Account Number portability would cost unimaginable amounts of money and take many years to implement. The Payments Council has looked into the possibility and recognises that delivering portability would require a central utility and the replacement of the current Sort Code/Account Number system; potentially they say, every customer, not just those switching their accounts, would need to have a new account number. And who would pay for the investment required to accomplish this? The customer, that’s who. Free (if in credit) banking is now so ingrained in UK banking culture that any bank that began charging for Standing Orders, ATM transactions and the like would see a stampede of customers moving their accounts away. Account Number portability as imagined by the Payments Council would be expensive to implement and to pay for it banks would introduce Current Account charging. Frankly I cannot see it being long before one of the High Street banks begins to charge all Current Account customers for their accounts anyway, and where one bank goes, the others will follow sooner or later.

People, be they Members of Parliament, journalists or the man on the Clapham omnibus, have a habit of believing that in this day and age if they can imagine it then it can be done. It always amuses me to read, and it is a phrase that commonly appears in newspapers, that such and such can be achieved “at the touch of a button.” Banks can transfer money from one side of the globe to another instantaneously, “at the touch of a button.” Banks should be able to transfer accounts, “at the touch of a button.” Few people have any comprehension of the amount of time and effort required to make something happen “at the touch of a button,” be it in banking or any other industry.

The famous button, at the touch of which, anything is possible.

For some fourteen years of my working life I was in some way responsible for making things happen “at the touch of a button” which can be very rewarding when you deliver the finished product, but extremely frustrating getting there.

Firstly there are the user’s requirements, which are either vague in the extreme and require innumerable meetings to extract, like blood from a stone, the user’s needs, or the requirements will contain all manner of fanciful, impracticable and sometimes bizarre features. This is sometimes referred to as wanting “the moon on a stick.” Inevitably however good, bad or indifferent the user’s requirements, one crucial factor will be forgotten and only introduced at a very late stage, to the consternation of all involved[3].

What users want.

The user’s requirements having been shoe-horned into a design document, which hopefully the users will sign off, development commences. Now the fun starts. Sometimes the needs of the users simply cannot be transformed into something workable; sometimes the software simply will not support the requirements; sometimes the developers have their own ideas about what the users want and build what they think is required rather than what was actually asked for. There are occasions when what the users want simply cannot be accommodated and a certain element of manual working is required; naturally once a human element is added to the process, the possibilities for some sort of error are increased. I would bet a pound to a penny that systems developed to accommodate account switching have gone through this process of compromise and negotiation and that some element will have potential failure points.

After development comes the testing (which, along with the requirement gathering and some of the design, was where I came in). Oh what fun to be given a new application or system or change to an existing one, and to try to break it, because that is what testing is largely about. It is very easy to test something and prove it works; the key to testing is to do the unexpected, to do things that are wrong, to try and make a system do something it was not designed for. When it comes to testing something it really is how it handles the exceptions that counts.

Ostensibly my role was a system tester, but I normally undertook User Acceptance Testing (UAT) too; usually because the business had too few people to spare to do it themselves. If they did do their own testing it would normally be in a fairly cursory manner. On one memorable occasion, many years ago, users failed to highlight a defect that they found in their testing on the grounds that they assumed it work properly when it went live. Err, not unless you tell someone to fix it, it won’t!

UAT is interesting; you have to get yourself inside the mind of someone who will actually use whatever it is you are testing and try to think of the most outrageous, obscure, bizarre sort of error that they could possibly make and try and replicate it. I like to think that I was pretty good at that, but I have to admit that no matter how hard I tried, real users, dealing with real customers and with real data, would always somehow create a scenario more unlikely than I could possibly have imagined. This would result in some change being necessary to the system, or sometimes some sort of manual workaround, temporary or permanent.

I anticipate that at some stage in the near future an article will appear in the press, or a feature will be shown on TV, highlighting horror stories of people who have had problems switching accounts despite the new service and its promises to simplify the process. At some point during that article or discussion, someone will in all probability say that it really should be achievable “at the touch of a button.” It would be nice, if just for once, someone acknowledged exactly what is required to make something happen “at the touch of a button.”

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[1] Or, as they were known to one of my favourite writers, Keith Waterhouse, The National Guesswork Authority.

[2] Full details of the Current Account Switch Service can be found on the Payments Council website http://www.paymentscouncil.org.uk/

[3] Sometimes known as scope creep, the introduction of critical requirements, sometimes on the eve of implementation is a frustration known only too well in IT departments.

"Send Three and Fourpence..."

A few years ago I read Deaf Sentence by David Lodge, a comic novel in which the central character, Desmond Bates, suffers from high frequency deafness. It struck a chord with me because the symptoms that the Bates character suffers (as does the author himself) are familiar to me.

High frequency deafness can be described as “consonant deafness.” It is exacerbated in noisy environments and sufferers have particular difficulty in hearing women and children, whose voices tend to be higher pitched than men’s. My experience is that the problem still exists when it is a man speaking; environment is the key factor, certain environments exacerbate the problem. These are most commonly establishments where the floors are wooden or concrete rather than carpeted; where the walls are bare stone or glass rather than wallpapered; where the furniture is metallic rather than upholstered. The level of ambient noise is also a factor. Obviously loud music is a problem, but even with no music at all the general hubbub of conversation, reverberating off glass walls, stone floors and metal furniture creates a severe obstacle to me understanding what anyone is saying.

To give you an example of how conversation can seem to those suffering high frequency deafness, imagine a sentence with all the vowels removed, say “T_m_rr_w    _s     g_ _ ng   t_   b_   m_stly   s_nny”[1] and you can decipher it with little effort. Now imagine all the consonants removed instead. The same sentence becomes “_o_ _ o_  i_  _oi_ _  _o  _e  _o _ _ _ _  _u_ _ _” which I defy you to translate into anything meaningful. When spoken, a sentence where the listener cannot hear the consonants becomes just a jumble of sounds.

Perhaps I should invest in one of these?

For those who suffer high frequency, or consonant deafness, a common complaint is “I can hear the words, I just can’t understand them.” I know this feeling well. There I am, listening intently to what someone is saying and all of a sudden they appear to have started to talk gibberish. The reason for this is that the words my ears are hearing have become muddled; my brain decides upon the only logical words they must have used and I am left wondering why the speaker would possibly want to take an elephant for a walk to the park when in actual fact they have just told me that their eldest child has gained a place at university.

David Lodge has said of his deafness that “it's a comic infirmity as opposed to blindness which is a tragic infirmity" and it is certainly true that while no one would ever make jokes about someone’s blindness, a person’s deafness, whether it is acute or minor, is often seen as fair game for humour, and yes, I have done it myself. Most of us will be familiar with the probably apocryphal story of the military message which, having passed through a number of radio relays, became transmogrified from “Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance,” into “Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance.” Well, imagine the passage of one person’s remark to the brain of the listener in a similar sense, i.e. passing through a number of relay stations, and it is easy to see how the message becomes garbled.

Mishearing what another person is saying can lead to misunderstandings of a comic or more serious nature, particularly if the hearer responds to what they thought they heard with an entirely inappropriate remark or answer that deeply offends the other person. This type of thing is frequently used as a comic device and will often crop up in a sketch in which a man ends up having his face slapped by a woman; a similar situation in real-life might have much more dire consequences!

I have been in situations where I have answered what I thought was said rather than what was actually said and only realise that my answer or comment makes no sense in the context of the conversation when the other party makes a face that instantly conveys their puzzlement. Often at this point they will depart to seek conversation with someone who can understand what they are saying.

Because high frequency hearing loss makes it hard for sufferers to hear and understand, and because some environments exaggerate the problem, it is easy and common for sufferers to give up, I know I have. I have often been at social gatherings where, no matter how hard I try, I do not understand more than about ten percent of what is being said to me. The effort of struggling to understand what is being said is tiring, frustrating and ultimately can lead to sufferers withdrawing from such situations, standing forlornly on the fringes of groups of happily chatting people. In many cases people decide not to bother going to these events in the first place because they know exactly what the experience will be.

I can recall many an evening that has started out as a potentially enjoyable social gathering descending into frustration as it progresses and the noise level increases, and with it difficulty in understanding conversations. However, even away from social situations, in the relative peace of my own home, I often have difficulty in hearing what people are saying. Or more accurately in understanding what they are saying. Now the sceptics among you may say that this is because I am not paying attention and sometimes that may be true, but even when I am paying attention I may simply not comprehend the words being used; by the time they get to my brain they have become altered in meaning at best and become nonsense at worst, hence misunderstandings occur.

There are a few techniques that speakers can use to help the consonant deafness sufferer. I find it much easier to understand what is being said if I can see the speaker’s lips moving.

If I say I didn’t understand or didn’t hear clearly, it can be useful if the speaker rephrases rather than simply repeats what they originally said. Perhaps most usefully and most crucially, I find it much easier to understand what is being said if the topic is introduced and then the critical question is asked, or the important statement is made.

For example, I may be all at sea with a question like “What time is the show?” which I am just as likely to hear as “Is it going to snow?”  even though it might be the height of summer and being no prospect of snow, but if someone were to say, “That show we are going to on Saturday; what time does it start?” there is much more likelihood of me getting to grips with what I am being asked. If I am taken by surprise by the question my mind jumps to the first conclusion it reaches about what has been said (and invariably this is wrong), resulting in a frustrating miscommunication.

David Lodge may have used high frequency deafness to comic effect in his book, but sufferers will often be at a loss to see the funny side of the problem in real life; if you meet someone who is afflicted in this way please try to be sympathetic, it really is a most aggravating condition.

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[1]“ Tomorrow is going to be mostly sunny” in case you could not work it out!

X-Factor Audience Stunned By Contestants Who Can Sing!

Considering that I am not a fan of TV talent shows like “Britain’s Got Talent” or “The X Factor” it comes as a surprise to me to be able to report that last Sunday I went to Wembley Arena to watch a recording of “The X Factor: Boot Camp” and actually rather enjoyed it.

The day did not start particularly auspiciously. Engineering work on the railway and underground meant that the routes I would normally have chosen were not an option and so it came as a surprise to me that the journey took only seventy five minutes; considerably less than I expected. We (that’s my younger daughter and I, for it is she who is really the X Factor fan) arrived at Wembley at 8.45 and joined the queue, which was perhaps not as long as one might expect. Perhaps the appeal of shows like this is waning. The ticket that had been emailed to me said “Doors open 9 am, doors close 10.30am” so I expected to be in the arena by about eleven o’clock and for recording to start at about mid-day. Here I was wildly optimistic. The queue we were in was to exchange our e-tickets for “proper” ones and when we were given these we were told to go away and come back at 12.30, three hours hence!

The Bobby Moore Statute - Plenty of time to take in the sights.

This was a bit of a surprise, so we wandered off in search of breakfast in the company of a great many Manchester United fans (and a few from Wigan) who were arriving for the FA Community Shield match. Now I like to arrive in good time for things, but these people were at Wembley five hours before kick-off, which even to me seems somewhat excessive. The queue at McDonalds was huge, so we gave that up as a bad job and found a catering wagon where the bacon roll and cup of tea were surprisingly good; unsurprisingly overpriced. Given the limited options available to the randomly gluten intolerant one (me, see my blog “My Intolerance”), I had to risk a normal bread roll for my bacon and am happy to report no unfavourable outcome. With three hours to kill we wandered around the stadium perimeter, had another cup of tea and eventually twelve-thirty arrived.

Unsurprisingly, even after taking our seats by one o’clock, it was a further hour before proceedings began and the judges, Nicole Scherzinger, Gary Barlow, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh were introduced. Now not being a fan of X Factor, I have no idea how this Boot Camp thing normally works, but apparently this year there is a bit of a departure from the norm, with the contestants who have passed the previous auditions being whittled down to the last six by their mentor in front of the live audience, who have some input in the choice by how much appreciation they show to each performance. Once six acts have been chosen, and there are six uncomfortable looking white chairs at the side of the stage for these lucky contestants, the remaining performers can usurp one of the occupants if the judges, with a little help from the audience if you believe the hype, think they are more worthy of a place. All this creates a little extra drama, a bit more pathos for some, a bit more joy for others.

In his book “Chart Throb”, Ben Elton classified contestants in shows like X Factor as Clingers, Mingers, Blingers and Singers[1]. This being Boot Camp, the wheat had been sorted from the chaff in previous auditions, so the acts we saw were, by and large, pretty good, i.e. “singers.” But it wouldn’t make good television for a talent show to be based on talent alone, and there were glimpses that at least two of the contestants who made it through Boot Camp have enough “history” to fall potentially into the “clingers” category.

By no means was the music to my taste; I’m a man in his middle fifties who likes prog rock for God’s sake, so the type of music on show, with a couple of exceptions, was hardly likely to feature in my CD collection. Nonetheless apart from one or maybe two them, these girls (and the oldest of them was about twenty-one) could really sing, even if they did largely inhabit that style which exaggerates and (to my ear) mangles even quite simple pieces.  Particularly impressive though, was the rendition of the Etta James song, “I’d Rather Go Blind.”  Mind you, they were all better at singing than they were at articulating why they, rather than anyone else, should progress to the next stage of the competition. They all came out with the same banal reasons why they should be chosen; “destiny,” “music is my life,” “I deserve this,” were all trotted out. No one had the honesty to say, “I want the fame and fortune and I’m a good enough singer” but perhaps I am being harsh on what was a group of principally teenage girls standing in front of four thousand people and being asked to boast. Since this year’s X Factor hasn’t started on TV yet, the audience was asked not to reveal the names of the successful Boot Camp contestants on Twitter or Facebook, or the like: no great hardship for me since I can’t remember any of their names.

If the contestant’s comments were trite, then the judge’s remarks were even more predictable. “You really nailed it,” and “You owned that song” were uttered with tedious regularity, even when it wasn’t strictly true. Sharon Osbourne called everyone “missus” (obviously not good with names), Louis Walsh was surprisingly meek and Gary Barlow was kind and generally helpful with his comments. Probably because it was her group of contestants, Nicole Scherzinger rather over-egged the pudding, extracting every ounce of emotion from her deliberations over which contestant to save, which one to send home, but hey this is television so what should I have expected?

What I possibly didn’t expect though, and was pleasantly surprised by, was that the observations from the judges were uniformly kind. Even where a performance wasn’t quite up to scratch the criticism was constructive; no one went away in tears because of the harshness of the comments, even if those who were sent away were probably sobbing gently as they left the stage.

So, did my Sunday at Wembley convert me into an X Factor fan? Well, no actually not quite, but it was fun for an afternoon and I suppose that I may just take a peek at this year’s series, just to see how the contestants I saw get on, you understand.

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[1] Clingers - the 'needy' ones with a tear-jerking back-story

Mingers - those uttterly desperate, there to be made fun of

Blingers - those convinced of their own greatness - of 'Destiny'

Singers - those able to perform, but really need to be CMBs too in order to get through to the show itself.

Windows 8: What Were They Thinking?

Change is inevitable: resistance to change is equally inevitable, if generally futile. I have seen both sides of the coin: at work I was frequently responsible for communicating and implementing change and dealing with the predictable opposition. At other times, both at work and in my personal life, I’ve been on the receiving end and tried to curb any hostility to the change and accept it, not always I have to admit, with the best of grace.

It is perhaps in the way in which people work and the changes that are made there, be it the process or procedures or in the tools used, that the most opposition and resistance is to be found. If you walk into any office in the UK there is a good chance that the operating system on the computers you find there is going to be Windows and over the years Microsoft have made regular changes to their operating systems, with mixed receptions it has to be said. Nowadays most people also use a desktop or laptop computer at home and in December 2012 Microsoft had a 91.74% share of the UK market. By operating system, Microsoft’s only perceived real competition, OS X (as used by Apple devices) had only 7.2% of the global market in July 2013[1] with over 81% of machines running Windows 7 or Vista. With their overall dominance, especially in the workplace, it is inevitable that Microsoft products come in for some criticism, most especially when they decide to upgrade and improve (and I use that word loosely) their operating system.

Back in the late 1980’s when I first encountered a PC it must have been running something like Windows 2.01, which came along in 1987. Windows NT was introduced in 1993; two years later there was Windows 95, followed (imaginatively) by Windows 98 in 1998, XP in 2001, Vista in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009 and Windows 8 in 2012[2]. The majority of these new systems have encompassed changes that reflected developments and improvements in the technology; sometimes the changes seem to owe more to fashion and trends than to direct improvements in functionality, but whatever the change, each upgrade takes a bit of getting used to. In my view the changes made by Microsoft in Windows 8 are trendy and fashionable rather than functional; they certainly need a bit of getting used to.

From this...
to this.

I consider myself to be reasonably computer literate; by no means a geek but certainly not a technophobe. For a number of years I was involved in testing computer systems at work; partly as a system tester and partly undertaking user acceptance testing, so I like to think that I know my way round a PC, or operating system, or an application and I have to say that I would not have enjoyed trying to test Windows 8!

What follows is not a detailed or technical review, rather these are some general thoughts on Windows 8 from the perspective of someone who has dallied with it in much the way that a new user might, having just taken their new PC or laptop out of the box.

First impressions are not favourable. Frankly it is a dog’s breakfast. The new Start screen (not to be confused with the Start Menu, which no longer exists), is attractive enough with tiles representing the various applications, although for traditionalists there is the option to go to the familiar Desktop view. It is almost as if Microsoft didn’t have the courage of their convictions; they seem to have needed the safety net of the old Desktop, but decided to make it unappealing to users to drive them back to the Start screen, viz the lack of a Start Menu.

Then there are the Charms. These are the functions that allow you to search, share photos, connect to wi-fi networks and change settings. Except they are elusive. Allegedly you display them by “swiping” to the right of the Start screen; “swiping” because the Start screen is the same design whether it is a touch screen on a tablet or uses traditional mouse or touch pad. My experience is that to deliberately get them to appear is harder than it should be with a mouse and nigh on impossible with the touch pad on a laptop; I’m not sure what the touch screen version is like, but I’m already really frustrated at the difficulty in getting the Charms (what a crass name, by the way) to appear.  Occasionally of course, the Charms appear at random, even though you don’t need or want them. Either way, they invariably disappear when you try to actually use them, seemingly never to re-appear.

As with an iPad, if you open an App from the Start screen it stays open and cannot be closed until you shut the PC down. Annoyingly, some of these Apps open unbidden. There you are, moving the mouse across the screen looking for Word (which you had to install because otherwise it’s WordPad or nothing) and suddenly, “ping” the Weather App is opening! Functions like Internet Explorer have a new look too; finding your History or Favourites is a challenge when really it shouldn’t be. Someone should really have told the developers that playing desktop hide and seek is no pleasure.

Frankly Windows 8 is a mish-mash of ideas, unsure whether it is a dedicated touch screen interface or an old school desktop. As I say, I’ve not seen or used the touchscreen version, but with the laptop I have been using I constantly want to touch the screen; I’ve even done so a couple of times and been momentarily baffled by the lack of response.

Inexplicably, Microsoft have discontinued support for DVD’s in Windows 8, so even though the PC or laptop you have bought will inevitably have a DVD drive, you won’t be able to play a DVD until you download an app, unless the manufacturer has pre- installed some non-Microsoft, DVD playing software.  Is this progress? Not really.

Apparently Windows 8 has been developed because Microsoft have” listened to feedback”; furthermore they say that “improving the product is a good thing”, which is so obvious that it is hardly worth uttering, although it is moot, and probably a matter of opinion, as to whether Windows 8 is an improvement anyway. As for listening to feedback, presumably this was a case of listening only to what they wanted to hear.

If you are happy with Windows 7 (or even the much maligned Vista, or whatever OS you currently have), then I suggest that you let Microsoft iron out the bugs and wait for Windows 8.1 or whatever comes next before even considering upgrading, because Windows 8 remains, in my view, an unfinished development; it appears to be a work in progress, with considerable progress still to be made. Ultimately it may be very good, but not at present. As with a lot of new things it could just be a question of getting used to the new operating system but I’ve been down that road before when migrating from one OS to another (both at work and at home) and Windows 8 will take a lot more getting used to than migrating from say XP to Vista. Sadly I think that in a bid to be trendy and to compete with Apple (and in particular the iPad), Microsoft have made it harder for the casual user to navigate around their system by hiding stuff and making even simple tasks  harder to accomplish than they need be.

Windows 8: Warning ! May provoke extreme reactions

Overall Windows 8 is a triumph of style over substance; a classic case of trying to please everyone and ultimately pleasing no one. For the moment at least I will be sticking with Vista when it comes to desktop computing. For everything else, there’s the iPad.

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[1] Source, Net Applications.

[2] This is by no means a comprehensive list of Microsoft operating systems.

One Night In Stratford - An Olympic Retrospective

When it was announced that London had won the bidding to host the 2012 Olympics, I suppose that I assumed that getting tickets would not pose too many problems. When the results of the first ballot for tickets was announced I realised how naive I had been because I was allocated precisely none; nada, zip, zilch, not a single one. I resigned myself to watching the Games on television, consoling myself that I had seen parts of the Torch relay and that I could perhaps see one of the “free” events like the marathon. Then along came the opening ceremony. I am not normally a fan of opening ceremonies but my elder daughter, who had got a job as a Games Maker, had been to a rehearsal and told me it was a bit special, so I watched it. I was dumb struck by its brilliance and was inspired; I now knew that I had to get tickets for something, anything.

Now it is well known that while most aspect of the Games were a success, the ticketing arrangements were heavily criticised and were something of a PR nightmare for the organisers, so it was with limited expectations that I logged on to the ticketing website. Within minutes I had been able to book tickets for the women’s basketball; not my first choice, but it was something. Then I noticed tickets available for the athletics on the evening of Saturday 4^th August. This was more like it! Frustratingly, although the website showed tickets available, when I came to book them it said there were none, but then a further search for tickets showed some still to be had. More in need of a whinge than anything, I phoned the ticket hotline (after a number of failed attempts) and was told that tickets were indeed available. The price quoted would probably have bought me a small house the last time the Olympics came to London in 1948. Was it worth it, I wondered? Would I regret it if I didn’t buy a ticket? After much dithering I gave my credit card details and stumped up £450, money well spent as it turned out. 

The obligatory shot outside the stadium, with Union Flag.

On Saturday 4^th August I collected my ticket at the ticket office at Stratford, passed through the airport style security and watched probably the greatest sporting event I have ever seen, or am likely to see. Awesome is a much overused word, but truly there is no greater superlative that can be used to describe that evening. Even half empty, the stadium itself looked magnificent. The spectators were enthusiastic and if largely supporting the British athletes, fully appreciative of the talents of the competitors of all nations. The atmosphere was overwhelming good natured, everyone was there to enjoy the spectacle, regardless of who won what event, unlike the partisan atmosphere at say, a major international football match.

As the stadium filled, the level of expectation palpably grew.

Of course Team GB was confident of at least one gold medal with Jessica Ennis leading the Heptathlon with just the 800 metres to go. In the build up to the Games and during the Games themselves, Ennis was pretty much poster girl for Team GB and the Games themselves. It is difficult to imagine the pressure that she must have been under; the weight of expectation was huge. That evening there was no possibility in the mind of anyone in that stadium that she would not claim gold and so it proved. I still find it difficult to watch a video of that race, or even replay it in my mind, without a lump in my throat. As Ennis crossed the line, the stadium rose and cheered with one voice. This couldn’t be topped, could it? Well, actually it could.

Jessica Ennis and her fellow heptathletes take a bow.

 There were high hopes that Mo Farah would claim a medal in the 10,000 metres, but he was nothing like as nailed on to win gold as Ennis apparently was. The twenty seven minutes that the race took will live with me forever. As Farah entered the last lap with a narrow lead the noise in the stadium was tremendous. As he flew down the back straight the cheering had been cranked up. As he came off the final bend, just twenty metres or so from where I was sitting (or standing by this stage), the cheering had cranked up still further. Everyone in the stadium seemed to be screaming at the top of their voices; I was, although by this stage I was incoherent, I have absolutely no idea what I was yelling! Somehow it occurred to me that when he crossed the line, and by now he was extending his lead and was certainly not going to be caught, the noise would increase still further, impossible though this seemed.

Mo duly crossed the finish line and the eruption of noise must be the loudest any group of human beings have ever made. Thinking back now, if Jessica Ennis’s race brings a lump to my throat, then I am likely to dissolve into tears when recalling Farah’s win.

While Ennis and Farah’s races were exceptionally emotional, Greg Rutherford’s win in the men’s long jump should never be forgotten either. In a remarkable period of less than an hour, Great Britain had amassed three gold medals, “quite remarkable” as David Coleman might have said.

This had been such a fantastic evening, such an emotional evening and such a successful evening, that when it was all over, it was with great reluctance that we left the stadium. Everyone present that evening knew that they had witnessed one of the greatest nights in British sporting history, that this truly was one occasion that we would never forget, and one which we wished would never end.

The crowd leaves the stadium with some reluctance.

Some people have been critical of the Games; many have doubted the supposed legacy that they have left. Surprisingly, it was Jimmy Carr who summed up the Games perfectly; “a summer off from cynicism,” he said, as Britain and particularly London, revelled in new found pride and pleasure. The Games did something exceptional; complete strangers talked to each other on the tube and at bus stops; the weather co-operated and one could actually be proud to be British!

I for one will never forget the Games and particularly the Saturday I was in the Olympic Stadium. It may have cost me an arm and a leg, but for the pleasure it gave me it was worth every penny.

Footnote:

As glorious and happy an occasion as the Games were, I find it impossible to think of them without recalling events of seven years previous. The euphoria that followed the announcement on 6^th July 2005 when London’s bid was announced as the winner was cut short by events less than twenty four hours later when bombs were detonated on the London Underground and buses, killing fifty two, injuring more than seven hundred and blighting the lives of thousands.