Here's a day, any day. It's me, but it could be any one of 20,000 noble, serving media folk here, the unthanked heroes of the Games, not a positive among them.
Wake up. Study early-morning Olympic schedule. Nothing important till afternoon. Back to sleep. Phone rings. Can only be office. Ignore. Knock on door. Housekeeping Nazi. Ignore at own peril. Novel dream about Inge de Bruijn really being Stan Laurel ends abruptly. Move about room. Open window. Call office on mobile. Hold hand over mouthpiece. Pretend to be in tunnel. Give impression of being man on the move. Say indignantly, "Yeah, that's where I'm going" when told of press conference starting now.
Get dressed. Pack two bags with any necessities which come to hand. Two bags. I am their servant. In one is a laptop, a phone, three adaptors which work and two which don't. There are three miles of wire and more connections and fiddly bits than it took to get a man on the moon. There are rechargers, tape recorders, binoculars, batteries, tapes and 20 floppy discs. There are four notebooks and a pen that leaks. The 20 floppy discs are indispensable. On them I have copied hundreds of articles in the name of research. I have spent afternoons doing this, smiling to myself all the while thinking what a clever boy am I. Oddly, I have forgotten to note which articles are copied onto which discs. The first bag is the lighter of the two bags. The heavier bag is the "nerve centre" in which I house my many "research materials". Books of statistics. All recent magazines. Copies of every newspaper article contained on the floppy discs in Bag One. Each copy is missing a tantalising page or two. This doesn't matter. As a rule, if an athlete's profile is in my articles bag he or she isn't at the Games at all or he or she always finishes well outside the top three. Arrive at main press centre. Frantically pillage centres' computers for background to press conference. Where is? Who about? Why? So What? There are immutable Olympic laws. If asked for 1,200 words on Javier Sotomayor for tomorrow, all the information available on Sotomayor in the main press centre will aggregate 600 words.
Attend vital press conference. Subject: drug allegations. Press conference has been called to confirm at some length to press that nobody can actually confer with the press. Love to. Can't. "I know, Bob, that you can't speak about the issue of drugs, so can you discuss with us various other non-surgical ways in which 14-year-old schoolgirls might turn into males? Is that common in Idaho, Bob? In your experience? Hypothetically, how would you react if you encountered that in - umh - your coaching capacity Bob?"
Have lunch at last. Main press centre lunch. Every day I have curry. I ask for something different every day but always it tastes like curry. I feel as if I am being laughed at.
Fed and watered, we head off to afternoon event. Notice admiringly that everybody else is leaving their goods and chattels spread promiscuously around the desks at the main press centre. Too uptight to go whole hog and do same. Leave pencil on desk just as experiment. May leave laptop here tomorrow if pencil is still here tonight. Head off to Dome, broken under weight of two bags.
Sweating profusely. Bags heavier by minute. Mirages. Arrive at Dome with three minutes to spare. Everyone inside already. Struggle to gate. This is the Dome, mate. You want the Superdome, mate. Smile weakly. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Drop dead.
Have arrived too late to observe departure of Irish contestant. Crowd still amused though. Get quote from onlooker: "Yeah, might have been dangerous, but you've got to see the funny side, mate."
It's late. 3:45 a.m. They are hoovering up the press area. My last coherent thoughts disappear up the vacuum pipe. Brainwave. Go to bathroom. Stick head under cold tap for five minutes. Come back shivering. Read copy that has been written. It is senseless gibberish. Three possibilities: a) The copy is perfect but am too tired to make sense of it; b) The copy is precisely as poor as it reads; c) This is a moment of shocking clarity. Always write I like poorly this?
About to close laptop when wonderful idea for column sneaks in at back of my mind. Decide to bring this to fruition later. Meanwhile make the following preliminary notes: The life. Day in. A. Ideas good was it. Column. wRITE MUST. Soon! Ha Ha. Bags.
That's right. Ha, ha, Bags. How wrong can one man be.
