Not since Noah stuck his hand out and felt the first few drops of rain and thought that he’d better get a move on has so much interest been shown in the completion of a roof.

Welcome to the 28th Modern Olympic Games, and welcome to our weblog. Living within a few hundred yards of the Olympic centre and being involved as Olympic volunteers, we thought it might be interesting, and possibly even entertaining, if we kept a weblog of our experiences and thoughts as Athens lurches towards its 15 minutes of global prominence. It will also, hopefully, prevent us having to say the same thing fifty times to fifty people. We’ll attempt to chronicle the highs and lows, the ups and downs, the ins and outs and the pros and cons of the games from the sharp end. Whether it’s a glorious national success for Greece or it all goes tits up, we’ll keep you up to date with what’s happening and what it’s like to be involved in the biggest sporting event on the planet, in however humble a way.

Where to begin? Perhaps I should say a word about my voluntary position. I am a Venue Host, working for Spectator Services. I think my responsibilities will involve saying, ‘So glad you could make it. Do come in. Excuse the mess.’ and handing round the canapes, before getting very drunk, making a pass at my best friend’s wife and then collapsing into a coma. Either that or directing spectators to the nearest toilet/phone/long jump pit, which should be a bit of a laugh since I have an abysmal sense of direction. I’m sure the trick is to point in any direction with confidence and smile and then if they get lost, they’ll naturally assume that they’ve gone wrong somewhere. I’ll let you know my precise responsibilities when I’ve had some training.

I’m sure that when we first filled in the forms to apply to be a volunteer (sometime last summer) there were some questions about being available for test events in...erm...April and May. I think the original timetable was for us to be offered places in November 2003 and then be trained in January. I received my offer of a place around the start of May and I’ve got no idea when I’ll be asked to do any training. Still, I’m sure they know best...

Just one final point for now on Olympic public relations. We were on Hydra (a Greek island off the Peloponnese) over the weekend, in an official Athens 2004 shop, when Jo overheard a woman ask an assistant what the Paralympics are. ‘Oh,’ replied the assistant, ‘they’re for people who have no hands and feet.’

Hmmm.

So, the news on TV was full of shots of the roof, the two halves now (almost) slid together. They look about 10 centimetres apart and one side is 5 centimetres lower than the other. I think that’s because the panelling they’ve put on one side makes it heavier. Anyway, the reporter claimed it was a triumph. Not sure I really understand quite what’s so revolutionary about this roof. Is it the building and then sliding into place bit? Really doesn’t seem that hard to me, but then again I’m not an engineer. Presumably the guys working on it are. Essentially, what they’ve done is build two huge arrangements of tubes on tracks and then move each one over half of the stadium. About as complex as getting an Apollo rocket from the hangar to the launchpad. And then leaving it there.

We drove past yesterday and I noticed that a lot of the guys scrambling about the roof putting glass panels in place weren’t wearing hard hats. I think something like 12 people have died in Olympic construction for Athens 2004, compared to 1 for Sydney 2000. It would be cynical in the extreme to suggest that more of a fuss might have been made of these figures if a high proportion of Olympic construction workers weren’t immigrants. I don’t suppose a hard hat would be much help if you fell seven stories, anyway.

Jo’s off to her first bout of training tomorrow, so that’ll be interesting.

Since Steve has made a start on the weblog, I thought I’d best get in there quick before he completely takes over.

Today, I had a Training Day. This was when we are supposed to pick up our uniforms, accreditation and roster for the Swimming Test Event which takes place between the 9th-12th June. I am going to be working in the media workroom at the swimming venue. I’ll explain more about what that entails when I find out myself!

So, off I go to Irinis train station where buses are to collect us to take us to the venues. The buses are there, my goodness, even the train station is there, but there don’t seem to be any official-looking people around. Just a lot of lost-looking volunteers, asking each other ‘what are you down for?’ and ‘where are we supposed to go?’ (in Greek - I am conspicuously the only foreigner). It feels very much like my first day at school, only this time I’m not wearing a hand-knitted, woollen pinafore dress. Anyway, I get on a bus. We go round behind the main stadium. I’m amazed at how much of a mess it looks – lumps of concrete everywhere, unfinished bits, roads that seem to come to a standstill in the middle of nowhere, a lone policeman on a motorbike reading a book.

The bus stops outside the main stadium, but nobody on the bus knows whether to get off or not. The driver says nothing. It’s starting to feel like it’s becoming farcical and I’m getting that feeling it’s going to be a long two and a half hours. I opt to stay on the bus – only because it’s air-conditioned and the majority of lost souls are staying on. We stop outside the swimming pool next. I know it’s the swimming pool because I drive past it every day and there’s a 15-year-old boy holding a plastic sign that says ‘Spectator Services’. I think he’s supposed to be helping people out, but it looks like someone has just handed him the sign, told him to look after it for a minute and then run off. I opt to stay on the bus. We head back to Irinis station. By this time some of the grown-ups on the bus are getting a bit annoyed. The bus stops at the back of a queue. We get off and walk to the front of the bus queue and get on another air-conditioned bus. This time I ask someone what I should do and he tells me to get off at the second stop. I’m feeling pleased with myself. Now I have Insider Knowledge.

Inside the swimming centre (which is all staircases leading to Goodness-Knows-Where) there is a queue. Feeling that there has to be safety in numbers, I join it. After about 20 minutes I get to someone who looks at my passport and shrugs and hands me on to the next person. This happens three times. My name doesn’t seem to be on the list and suddenly no-one in the whole building speaks English or can explain why it’s not there. Then, I realise maybe I’ve come to the wrong place. Maybe, they’ve accidentally dropped us all off at the IKA office (social security offices) and I’m supposed to spend the day getting as many signatures and stamps on a piece of paper as will fit….

(to be continued)

Before Jo gives you the rest of her account of her training adventures, I just wanted to mention Chris Salmon’s weblog, Athens2004blog (linked on the left). Check it out for a very readable round-up of all things Athens2004 related. He’s got an infectious sense of enthusiasm for the Greek Games, and he was good enough to put a link back to this outpost of cyberspace, so he can’t be all bad.

And lest it seem that we’re not quite accen-chuating the positive and ee-liminating the negative enough, thanks to Jeanne (friend, colleague, inspiration, villager) for the link to Paul Mansfield’s Telegraph article on Athens. As Paul points out, Athens has benefited hugely from infrastructure development on the back of the Olympics: the airport, ringroad (privately funded) and Metro system are all excellent. It’s just a shame that it takes the threat of international humiliation to get these things done.

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of visitor experiences come out of the Olympics. The consensus among people I’ve talked to seems to be that people travelling for the Games will be so up for it that they’ll forgive minor inconveniences, or even see them as exotic local colour. I tend to think that the media have a crucial role to play. We get satellite TV from Britain and there’s a definite tendency to dwell on the negative (and it was worse before the roof started moving). I’m sure that there’ll be ‘Olympic disaster’ slants to be taken if that’s what the media are looking out for. On the other hand, if they take the attitude that Greece has done its best for a country 1/6th the size of the UK and 1/25th the size of the US, then it should be fine...

Oh, and I should just mention that I’ve figured out how to use usericons so that Fivos (male Athens Games mascot) above an entry means that I wrote it and Athina (female mascot) means that Jo wrote it. Clever, eh? More on the interesting history of Olympic mascots next time...

Jo’s test event has started, and no doubt she’ll bring you all up to speed on that soon. She was very fetching in her oversize Adidas T-shirt. The temporary test event uniform is a bit open-air market – white T-shirt, blue shorts and a blue baseball cap – but the final uniform is, I think, quite cool. Oh, and you do get two copies of everything, so there’s no frantic overnight washing and mangling.

I promised a word about Olympic mascots and I won't disappoint. Get on over to this site for a detailed history, but I'll just give you the edited highlights. In the beginning, there was a kind of deformed tadpole on a ski called Schuss. He was the unofficial Olympic mascot for Grenoble 1968, at which point people were doing a lot of acid. Before that, people mostly made do with rocks, pieces of mud and cheese as lucky emblems.

After he had introduced the concept of Olympic mascots, the sky was the limit. Munich in 1972 had Waldi, a multicoloured dachshund. (I believe it's politically incorrect to refer to them as sausage dogs and having one that nods its head in the back of your car marks you out as a breed-fascist of the worst kind.) This was followed in Montreal 1976 by my personal favourite, Amik the beaver, a shapeless stuffed brown nothing. No wonder they're still paying the debt for the Olympics (through a tobacco tax, for those of you who didn't know).

Moscow had Misha the bear, LA had Sam the Eagle (a very naff response to Misha, but then that was the 20th century - simpler times), Seoul had Hodori the tiger, Barcelona had Kobi the dog and Atlanta had Izzy, a kind of fantasy creature that looks like Sonic the Hedgehog on steroids, which just about sums up the Atlanta Olympics. Sydney had three mascots: Ollie (from 'Olympic', a kookaburra), Syd (from 'Sydney', a platypus) and Millie (from 'millennium', an echidna).

And Athens has Fivos and Athina. I've always quite liked them - but the response from other people has been generally negative. Not sure why. I think they're quite fun and child-like. And it's great that the organisers avoided the pitfall of having some kind of ancient Greek complete with toga and laurel wreath.

The Paralympics has its own mascot - Proteas, a male seahorse. Don't male seahorses get pregnant? I wonder if he'll begin to show before the Paralympics are over.

One final word for now on minority sports. There's some concern that Greece won't do very well at handling sports it's not traditionally big on, like baseball and badminton. Some enterprising journalists are cashing in since they learned the rules of badminton a year ago, attended an event and now, two months before the opening, they're the national expert. Anyway, the news on ET1 (state channel) today had a report on goalball. Goalball is a game for the blind and partially-sighted that involves rolling a ball that makes a noise into your opponents' goal. Well done them for trying to put disabled sport before the nation.

It would be churlish to point out that absolutely nobody in the country watches ET1.

I’ll just quickly round off the training day before telling you about the Test Event. The upshot was that the hyphenation of my surname had the organisers flummoxed and my name was on one list but not on another (two surnames for one person? Man cannot live at that speed!). So, I couldn’t collect my uniform or accreditation, so it was arranged that I would pick them up at the Test Event. The training involved an hour and a half talk about aspects of volunteering, although I was slightly surprised that it was all exclusively in Greek, which had one or two non-Greek volunteers gazing about absently for want of comprehension. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the slide show displaying the venue and transport links couldn’t be seen from about 50 seats which were behind the screen.

When it came to the Test Event, I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have accreditation. After struggling to explain it to a security guard, I finally made my way round to another entrance where I sneaked in without anyone seeing me. (The policemen were talking to some men on motorbikes. Rest assured that this was not full Olympic-level security. I think.) Once in, I was still on one list and not on another, so it took me about an hour to get fully kitted out, by which time the only T-shirts left were XL, which at least meant that it kept my ankles warm.

The Test Event as a whole was a success, with all the athletes praising the venue, saying that it was a very fast pool, which bodes well for the Olympics. What I saw of the event seemed to run very smoothly. There were one or two complaints from spectators about the lack of roof, and it’s difficult to imagine anyone being able to sit there comfortably in the mid-August sunshine, but we’ll see.

My duties involved ‘Press Tribune’ (handing out results to Greek and international journalists). There were about 15 journos, but during the Games there will be about 600 and 15 volunteers doing that job. It involves a lot of running up and down stairs, which is why I’m quite glad I’m not doing it during the Olympics, even though you get to see some of the swimming. I also worked on pigeonholes (putting the results, etc, in pigeonholes) – very dull because you don’t get to see any swimming – and the press conference, which was held at the end of the day with two Brazilian swimmers. I’d spent four hours waiting for it to happen and had had a pep talk about handing a microphone over to a journalist who wanted to ask a question of the athletes but when it came down to it, a paid employee took over and I held the door open. Interesting to see how the interpreters work, although when one of the swimmer’s comments went from Portuguese into Greek and then into English, I wasn’t entirely convinced that something wasn’t being lost, at least in the Greek to English bits I understood. I also worked in the Mixed Zone, which is where journalists get to talk to the swimmers as they come out of the pool. During the whole evening there were three journalists from a Japanese paper, all wanting to talk to the British swimmers so I spent most of the time chatting to a very nice Greek girl about courgette soup. Nice to be close to the athletes, who reminded me of racehorses – bronzed and sleek and at the peak of their fitness.

Oh, and at the end of the day, I wasn’t on the list (again!) so I didn’t get my thank-you diploma and gift – but it’s coming by post. I wonder what it can be.

Channel 4 (in England) ran a news report this evening from Athens, interviewing Calatrava (the Spanish architect who designed the roof and the rest of the Olympic complex). Under the headline ‘Acropolis now’ (geddit?), they showed the inside of the stadium, the area around the stadium and interviewed a few Greeks. In summary, the point was that the inside looks unfinished (but the roof is nice), the outside very unfinished and there are 58 days to go. All the Greeks seemed quite relaxed about it, everyone repeating the anodyne about it being the Greek way to do nothing for a long time and then somehow magically bring together all the threads at the last minute and leave everyone wondering what all the fuss was about. Let’s hope that’s how it works out, or there’s going to have to be a bit of a rethink on what ‘the Greek way’ is.

On a different note, I’m very pleased to be able to set all your minds at rest on one vital question: why is there no cricket at the Olympics? Well, I guess it would be a logistical nightmare. The IOC seem to steer clear of events where one match can take up to 5 days, and even the one-day version might still see people batting in fading light long after the closing ceremony. However, it was intended to form part of the 1896 Olympics, but with Great Britain being the only country to enter a team, it was a bit of a non-starter. In 1900 in Paris, though, the one and only Olympic cricket match took place. The competing teams were Great Britain (represented by the Devon and Somerset Wanderers Cricket Club) and France (represented by a team of ex-pats from the British embassy in Paris). GBR won gold with a scoreline of 262 to 104.

This week's Athens News (an English-language weekly) is out and the focus is on the cost of the games: six billion euros is the latest estimate, and that doesn't include a lot of infrastructure building. And the tram from the centre to the southern suburbs has been out on a test run, frightening dogs and old ladies. Looks very modern, very hi-tech. One month before the start of its scheduled operation, there is no signalling at road junctions and so ‘police and workers’ had to stop traffic. Maybe they also had a guy walking in front with a red flag. Should be great when it’s up and running – from the centre to the beach for 60 cents.

There was one report that struck me. The Canadian embassy in Athens has raised money to buy wheelchairs for the Greek wheelchair basketball team, who have qualified for the Olympics for the first time. There’s a ceremony to mark the handing over of the wheelchairs in a couple of days’ time.

Erm…

Maybe that’s the way things work, and well done the Canadian embassy, but…

Isn’t it a little odd that six billion euros has been spent on the Olympics and the Greek wheelchair basketball team has to rely on foreign benevolence to equip itself for the Games?

Oh, we’ve had a couple of phone calls from the Greek daily broadsheet Kathimerini. They got Jo’s name and number from somewhere and they want to interview her about her volunteer experiences and put her photo in the paper. No doubt she’ll bring you up to date on that particular brush with fame.

Remember that you can comment on any entry in this weblog by clicking below. It’d be great to hear some of your thoughts.

As part of the Cultural Olympiad, a new gallery (DESTE Foundation of Modern Art) has just opened in Nea Ionia, one of the districts that neighbours ours in Athens. While most people had to wait until tonight for the public opening, or last night for the press opening, we went on Friday night to the exclusive VIP preview. Connections, darling, connections. Under the title Monument to Now, it was a splendid exhibition of names such as Gilbert and George and Jeff Koons, with a performance of late 80s / early 90s acid jazz arranged for brass band. We had far too much to drink and went to a great slap-up meal afterwards, where we again had far too much to drink.

All in all, a great reminder that the best things about modern art have nothing whatsoever to do with the pieces in the gallery.

Well, I’m not one to blow my own trumpet (modesty, moi?) but I must tell you what an international superstar I seem to have become. Apart from attending one of THE most fabulous opening nights at a brilliant art gallery just round the corner and getting drunk on atmosphere, champagne and oysters, I also stood a centimetre away from Jeff Koons. Things are definitely looking up. Anyway, for some reason which I have yet to fathom, a journalist from Kathimerini newspaper (I guess the only true Greek broadsheet) rang me last week to ask if I was happy to be interviewed for a supplement they were preparing on people who were working in some capacity on the Games. Obviously, I leapt around the living room going ‘me, me, me’ and singing the Bros song from the 80s (‘when will I, will I be famous’ before replying in the positive.

So, yesterday, a very sweet gentleman from the paper spoke to me for a while asking me how I ended up in Greece (‘I followed my heart,’ I told him), how long I’d been here and what I thought of the Games in general. I can’t say that I was the wittiest I’ve ever been, but then it is a serious paper. So I chose to adopt my ‘I-love-Greece’ voice and I banged on for a while about how great the Games will be despite, and in spite of, everything (which, for the record, I truly believe). I didn’t mention anything about the lumps of concrete out the back that still need clearing up or the fact that there is a weird thing going on in the Olympic village that I fear I might have dreamt.

When we were bused from the station to the swimming venue we drove through the area where the flats are that journos will live in. Slap bang in the middle of everything, right next to the media centre, is a little typical Greek shack. You know the thing… chickens in the yard, an old pair of grubby pants hanging on a line, a thin whisp of smoke escaping through the chimney. Very sweet and totally right. I do hope it’s still there in 2 months’ time for everyone to admire. And that the owner has free tickets to all the events.

Anyway. So yesterday was the photo shoot for Kathimerini DAAAARLING. Which meant getting up at 10am (something I can’t admit to being used to) to trek off to the swimming venue in my oversize t-shirt, cheap Tommy Balls trainers and Romford market leggings. It took about half an hour for all of us to get in (I was very impressed by the security measures – the photographer from the paper had to have his details verified before he could get it. I’m not entirely sure what the process involved except that a big, important police chief turned up, took down the man’s details and then disappeared to drink frappe for a while.)

So, then I had to sit on a starting block by the warm-up pool while my photo was taken a million times (the main pool had gone all hairy and green since the Test Event so it wasn’t suitable) trying not to blink at direct sunlight, until I was seeing stars. And I had the worst bangover in history. The article is out in about two weeks’ time they tell me. Please don’t expect me to look my best…

The second Olympic cultural festival was launched yesterday (International Olympic Day), with a gala evening of singing and dancing.

In Beijing. That's right. The Beijingers(?) are already on their second cultural festival, four years before curtain-up on the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

According to their website, 'The performance blossomed in radiant splendor. The magical stage effect, joyous tone, mild music and graceful dance together made the audience intoxicated and enchanted, with enthusiastic applause bursting out once and again.'

Which must have been nice.

We've just got back from a weekend on Poros, an island about an hour from Piraeus. We did some good lying by the pool, although I seem to have some stripes due to incomplete application of sunblock. Why don't they make it blue or something then you can see which bits you've done?

We had a splendid time, but the only amusing thing to report, really, was a sign for the 'Poros Animal Welfare Society Barbecue', complete with menu, including pork chops, chicken fillets, etc. Am I the only one to find that somewhat ironic?

More interestingly, I'd like to revisit the topic of an earlier posting, the Olympic wheelchair basketball wheelchairs. For the Athens News is out again, clarifying what the Canadian embassy actually bought. They didn't buy chairs for the national team at all. They bought chairs for two private wheelchair basketball clubs, leaving the national team to cope with its five-year-old equipment. This is being spun as donating chairs to 'Greek wheelchair basketball athletes'. See the difference?

And now athletes are complaining about a selection scandal. The accusation is that with wheelchair basketball federation elections coming up, the selectors have allegedly selected a less-than-full-strength team in order to garner votes. An anonymous source 'close to the national team' said that 'the Greek team will be utterly humiliated in the Paralympics'. Despite trials being promised in May, they never happened and a list of players was simply published because, as the wheelchair basketball federation general secretary said, 'the coach knows the players'.

The federation requested state funding to purchase wheelchairs a year ago but has yet to receive any money.

We both got letters asking us to go and pick up our volunteer uniforms this week and Jo got hers today. Decent quality stuff, and when you multiply the whole thing by 60,000 volunteers, it must have cost a fair bit, although I'm sure they must be sponsored by Adidas. Each volunteer gets a sunhat, a bum bag (with plastic flask), three shirts, three pairs of socks, three pairs of trousers (which can be unzipped into shorts) and a jacket. Go here to see what the best-dressed volunteers are sporting this season.

I finally got around to posting a couple of pics to the gallery. They were taken last night in the centre of Athens on a friend's balcony.