Olympic feat
Recently I had a tour of the Olympic Park to the East of London.
The site occupies an area the size of Hyde Park and whilst much of it still feels like a building site or still appears to bear the scars of the pitiless poundings of the last war, the main buildings are basically complete.
The magnificent Olympic Stadium that will see the 100m final, the graceful flick of the Velodrome and over to the east an athletes' village, much of which will become social housing after the games are gone, a legacy for the future.
The past, too, is potent here. Centuries ago there was textile printing — the stewing of bone, slither of soap, steaming distilleries, engineering and chemical brews. More recently it was a monument to rubbish — a landfill, polluting the River Lea and raising up by 60 feet its sodden banks toward a dreary sky.
Before the first of the Olympic stones was set all had to be decontaminated. An army of messianic machines were dragged about — crushing the earth clear of its past. Buildings were demolished. Parklands planted with a thousand trees. The river cleansed. A transport system dragged out into the daylight — buffed up — ready to ferry in 800,000 spectators to watch 200 nations in the greatest show on Earth.
Over half the planet will watch our Olympics and Para-Olympics. And it will be the third time we play the host — 1908 (when we stood in for Rome then struck by the wrath of Mount Vesuvius), 1948 (the first televised games) and now 2012 (when the legacy of the Olympics and Para-Olympics this time around will live on in this extraordinary creation).
From what I saw these will be a games that will make us very proud indeed.