Let's Play Bullshit Bingo!

Here we are in Loughborough for the School Games team manager orientation weekend. I'm particularly looking forward to the Venue Orientation session, because the venue is the Olympic Park, whereas we're 150 miles away…

I'm gradually ticking off the buzzwords. We've already had 'challenge', 'opportunity', 'going forward', 'empower', 'going forward' (this last makes me yearn for the techniques of the Spanish Inquisition), bloody 'journey', and a painful ice-breaker involving holding hands and moving round without breaking contact. This seems particularly redundant, given that a) I've known these people for at least ten years, and b) my room-mate and colleague paraded round the room in the nip this morning. I consider the ice well and truly broken. I hate the 'bonding' culture. It's against my Irish cultural inheritance: answer every question with a question. Give nothing away. Repression is everything. They're only after confiscating my land.

Now we're on to 'Values'. Apparently we're not allowed the same 'values' as the Olympics. Are they copyrighted? I've suggested we adopt this set of values:

Welcome to Loughborough

Initial impression: it has a Tesco. And a Subway. The hotel has no pedestrian entrance.

I realise that this may not be what Loughborough's Tourism Czar is hoping for, but I must admit that I am a teensy bit biased. From my undergraduate days I remember two things about Loughborough University: its reputation for being a track-suited redoubt of the Nice-But-Dims, and a thoroughly-deserved name for being deeply Tory. Not the aristocratic Toryism of Oxbridge and their wannabes, but the chippy Toryism of the Mail-reading classes. I know, what a snobby thing to say, but I distinctly remember seeing a picture of the Students' Union president proudly displaying his office portrait of John Major. On such things are lifelong resentments founded.

I'm sure that it's a much nicer place these days. I resolve to be a kinder nicer person this weekend that hitherto. What am I doing here, anyway? Well, it's the annual orientation and management training day for the School Games. This is Michael Gove's truncated, cheaper and meaner version of the UK School Games, which was meant to be part of the Olympic Legacy. Gove couldn't stand allowing a Labour idea to live, so he's replaced it, and lost a huge number of young athletes and schools along the way.

Still, the event lives on and I'll do my bit: the fencers and the staff are all the same, so it'll be great. All I have to do this weekend is grit my teeth and say nothing when sports-management buzzword follows sports-management buzzword across the PowerPoint screen. In Comic Sans.

I've done this for five years now and still love it, even the bits which involve standing in the rain at 2 a.m. surrounded by crying teenage girls (thanks, Cardiff University's silverfish infestation) or dealing with allegations of the kind of thing that comes up in youth sport now and then. I like the tension of team events, I like seeing the underdogs come through, the ripples of scandal that move through the crowds, seeing friendships made and rivalries come to a head. I particularly like the kids' cheery disdain for whichever suited politician makes a dull speech at the opening ceremony (poor Seb Coe wasn't universally popular last time). Head here for a photographic taste of last year's event.

Playing Olympic Games

More promotional bumf from the Olympics today. Including this

In recognition of Visa’s long standing support of the Olympic Games, we are proud to accept only Visa cards (credit, debit and prepaid) for online ticket applications. 

I actually have a Visa debit card, but this kind of coercive bullshit (and 'proud' makes me cringe: the Georgians and Victorians called it 'cant' - why not admit that they offered you loads more money?) annoys me. When the time comes to buy tickets, I'm going to send them a jiffy bag of copper coins.

That's enough from me for a few days. Monday's a bank holiday so I won't be blogging. ON Tuesday I may be in for a couple of hours, then I'm off to magnificent Newcastle on Tyne/Gateshead for the 2010 UK School Games - not sure if there'll be any web access at all. Try to manage without me while I wear tracksuits for 5 whole days…

My Week in Polyester

Hello civilians. Here I am, in a rather good student residence at Cardiff University, and you wouldn't recognise me.

I turned up yesterday for interminable meetings and orientations, wearing my habitual academia-cool rig: cherry-red DMs, black 501s, quietly striped shirt. You know, the devastatingly suave look I've adopted over the years.

Within an hour, I was wearing man-made fibres in the most horrendous shades, and my conversation has headed the same way. My particular team is wearing a particularly fetching virulent yellow shade this year - polo shirts and hoodies (I've brought my camera, so may trat . This garb is compulsory for the next five days, despite them giving us only two shirts…

Once dressed as a Tracksuit Studies student, you're treated as one. No more talk of books, music or any of the other things that make us rounded people. Instead, we talk of development, and Fast Track, training camps and performance skills, slag off our National Governing Body presidents and bemoan the disaster which befall us. We share our tales of visiting glamorous cities, to see only the inside of a sports hall, then we disperse to count kit or check bus provision.

Yes, it's going to be a weird weekend. This morning we meet the Athlete Village Leaders and other strangely-monickered people, then the early arrivals appear. Later on, the full teams turn up and the firefighting begins. Meetings at 6.30 a.m. and patrolling corridors until 2. There's a posh opening ceremony with all sorts of Olympians tonight, then competition starts tomorrow.

As they say in a popular film: No more reading - time to ROCK!

Merch o Gaerdydd

Well, here I am in Cardiff. I'll resist the temptation to live-blog the UK School Games Team Managers' Orientation Day, as I'm not sure you could stand the excitement. There are a lot of tall, willowy, fit looking people in intimidating sports gear - Olympics this, World Championships that (I'm wearing my England Fencing hoodie, which is probably a bad choice in Wales). And there are swimmers, none of whom look like they're particularly aquatic, to put it kindly.

We came down in driving rain, through the most rural areas of Shropshire, Herefordshire and Wales - wonderful. Spring-summer brought out a rainbow of greens, the grey-honey stone was restful on the eyes, and every village had a name more evocative than the last - Stanton Lacy, Corfton Bache, St. Weonard's, Wormelow…

And now I'm in the poshest hotel I've ever been in. I feel like I'm messing the place up simply by sitting here!

Fare thee well

After a delightful and sophisticated lunch with the Deer Friend, I'm off to Cardiff, so have a good weekend - you probably won't hear from me, which may constitute a good one.

I've just noticed with some glee that my friend William's book Jean Baudrillard: Against Banality is in the same typeset as my copy of Moominpappa at Sea (except for the front covers). Must look up the name of the type.

Moonlighting again

You won't be seeing too much of me this week. I've got a mountain of marking to do, and tomorrow I'm off to Cardiff. If you don't know me personally (I know, I only have four readers), you might not know that as well as being a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is, I'm substituting arthritic performances on the fencing piste for helping out with competitions.

So wearing my Welfare and Child Protection hat, I'm off to south Wales for a site inspection, risk assessment and training course for the UK School Games. It's a multi-sport competition which is meant to give the competitors a full Olympic experience - Olympic medal winners were all over the place last year including Lord Baldemort himself, Duncan Goodhew and the swimmer from Mansfield who won loads of medals in Beijing.

I'm clearly a bad referee though. I should have been at the U10s championship this weekend, but instead I ran away to Minehead for a rock gig.