The waiting is over. Almost. Some of us have already had an Olympic experience (we went to a football session at Old Trafford last night) but tonight, finally, the Olympics officially opens. I've explained before how excited we all are but it's taken on a slightly different meaning for us since I agreed to be involved with the Times Olympic Scrapbook, detailing our experiences of cataloguing the events of the next 17 days.
I've just been told that if you've missed out getting a scrapbook before, there is one last chance to get your mitts on one before it all kicks off tonight. What you will need to do is to go here and print the voucher, fill it out and take it to your nearest WH Smith or Waitrose before they close TONIGHT. Yes, that's right. If you really want to join in and get scrapbooking the games with your children, you need to be quick off the mark! That way, you'll be ready and raring to go to start scrapbooking tomorrow.
If you've been away and have no idea what I'm talking about, my original post about this project explains more. The Times and Sunday Times have already given away more than a million of these scrapbooks, so there are a lot of people poised to start collecting their favourite memories, starting of course, with the opening ceremony. Even today's edition has a special games section - I liked the clever world map showing which nations excel at which sports. We're good at "sitting down" sports and the Americans just about everything, of course.
From tomorrow, there will be 15 special souvenir editions of the Times and we'll be cutting out our favourite pictures. For the children, tonight's ceremony is going to be just too late - normally, I'd let them stay up as a special occasion but we did that last night and then they only slept until 7 so both are somewhat lethargic. I have promised to record it all so they can see it in the morning - memories don't have to be watched live, do they?! I have high hopes for the ceremony after seeing the briefest of sneak previews - I love Danny Boyle's style and the way he doesn't take himself too seriously so I suspect that something of him may go into this, along with all the over-the-top events that can only feature in an opening ceremony.
Come back again soon and see how we got on with scrapbooking the opening ceremony, but don't forget to be quick if you want to grab that voucher and get one of the last scrapbooks so your family can join in too!
