The Para-Olympics Are Here.

And I've had my hair cut specially. Well I had my hair cut to avoid having to have it cut during the games but same thing really.

In preparation for tonight's opening ceremony for the Parallel Olympics Germany discovered an unexploded World War 2 bomb in Munich. As the bomb had a complicated chemical rather then mechanical detonator it had to blown up rather then diffused. Although no-one's come out and said it it is more then likely that this bomb was dropped by Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF). Therefore it was an enquiry about what sort of antics Britain has got planned for the para-Olympics. As a closer ally of Britain the Netherlands tried to join in the discussion by discovering their own unexploded WW2 bomb at Schipol airport. Feeling ignored though the Dutch then decided that a plane heading from Malaga in Spain to Schipol airport had been hijacked so they scrambled F-16 fighter jets to escort the jet onto the ground where it was boarded by military personnel. Once on the ground it was quickly revealed that there hadn't been a hijacking and the whole thing was based on a communication failure. Apart from being a show of Dutch military strengh this was a confusing reference to that time I flew back from Barcelona airport in Spain to Heathrow airport in the days before my passport got confiscated. After the bus/coach I was travelling from Madrid to Barcelona on was stopped by armed police in an incident similar to the incident on Britain's M6 motorway during terrorism week (6/7/12) I arrived at Barcelona airport to discover that my British Airways (BA) flight to Heathrow was severely delayed. Not knowing why the flight was delayed BA staff did what they always do and blamed it on French air-traffic controllers going on strike. It was only after I arrived in London many hours later that I discovered that the delay was actually caused by an armed robbery at Schipol airport.

In response to Germany's orginal enquiry English cricket captain Andrew Strauss has today stepped down and retired from professional cricket. This is a follow on from the scandal in which South African born English cricketer Kevin Peiterson (me) got in trouble for sending text (sms) to friends of his on the South African cricket team telling them how best to beat England ahead of the third test between England and South Africa. Some of these messages were quite offensive and cast doubt over Strauss' abilities as a cricketer and captain. So Strauss stepping down could be viewed as Peiterson being proved correct and interpreted that Britain would be appointing a different and possibly less aggressive captain for the para-Olympics. However the new captain is Alastair Cook who Peiterson was also extremely offensive about so I don't think Peiterson's chances of getting back into the England team have improved much even if confusion reigns.

Also today my father got a telephone call from a man in Crawley who'd found his diary which obviously contained his home and mobile telephone numbers. The only problem was that my father hasn't been to Crawley in the best part of five years and was actually looking at his diary at the time. So it appears that someone has produced at least one forged copy of my father's diary and distributed them around the country. Even by Olympic standards that's very odd behaviour.

16:00 on 29/8/12.

edited at around 16:40 on 29/8/12; The rumours I've been hearing about the para-Olympic opening ceremony is that the Shakespeare play "The Tempest" will feature heavily. With Hurricane Issac more or less stopped over the coast of the USA this is likely to get very odd very quickly because the Tempest obviously starts with a big storm and contrasts the sort of rational magic of "Prospero" who controls the weather through science and knowledge and the irrational magic of "Sycorax" who summons the spirits. So a sample discussion would be whether the script for the ceremony was finalised before or after Issac began to be tracked.