David Weir's Done It.

By winning the para-Olympic marathon Britain's T54 distance wheelchair racer has secured his fourth Gold medal of the 2012 games and has helped put TeamGB third in the medal table with 34 Golds and 120 medals in total. Australia almost caught us but the Gold they won in the wheelchair rugby just wasn't quite enough leaving them on 32 Golds and 85 medals in total. Finishing just above TeamGB was Russia whose Gold in todays 7-a-side football put them on 36 Golds and 102 medals in total. China's massive population of course meant they won with a massive 95 Golds and 235 medals in total which is certainly going to increase interest in China for the para-Olympics.

Yes that's right when I was sober yesterday I may have inadvertently said wheelchair basketball when I might have meant 7-a-side football. The first match of the day was the Bronze medal play-off in which Iran thrashed Brazil 5-0. This might have something to do with the fact the Iranian Rial (not to be confused with the Brazilian Real) has collapsed due to sanctions and the country is now facing a Zimbabwean levels of inflation while trying to prop up the Syrian government. The second match was the final between Russia and Ukraine which was probably an inquiry about Ukrainian/Russia relations. In the end they knocked the ball about for a bit before Russia did the decent thing and ended the game 1-0. I must say that I'm a bit p*ssed off that I only discovered 7-a-side football now because the standards actually quite high with a couple of the players standing a chance of getting onto my local side. Mind you my local side is so sh*t David Weir stands a chance of getting a game. Sadly the football hating Channel 4 spent most of their time concentrating on the Goalball which as a form a blind football is just a joke designed to promote discussion about the use of goal line technology in proper (i.e men's) football. And you see I can get away with saying that because there's little chance of any of the players reading it.

Also while I was outside in a moment of quiet contemplation my thoughts turned to the closing ceremony. As I've heard that the ceremony will feature 'travellers' who will storm the stage and 'members of the police and military' apart from being a reference to Climate Camp this could also be a reference to the "Battle of the Beanfield." The really short version of this is that with really high levels of unemployment in the 1980's many young British people found themselves unable to afford to rent or buy a home so instead decided to scrape together whatever money they had to buy a vehicle/van that they would live in as they travelled around the country in huge convoys throwing absolutely massive parties (Raves). You still see examples of these New Age Travellers on continental Europe but in Britain the Thatcher government decided to kill them all. Proving the 'New Age' part of their name in June 1985 a large convoy was travelling towards Stonehenge in order celebrated the longest day (Summer Solstice). Unfortunately they found the road blocked by an army of police (some say many of them were simply soldiers in police uniform) who forced them off the road - into a beanfeild - before beating many of them half to death. The travellers got their revenge in 1990 though when they blocked the Poll Tax and forced Thatcher to step down. The Conservative government got the last laugh though when they passed the 1994 Criminal Justice Act which simply made the travellers life style illegal.

Also all this talk of solstices and changes of the season makes me think that it might be a good moment to explain there are actually three concepts of time in effect in the UK at the moment. Firstly there is British Summer Time (BST) which was invented during the first world war to increase productivity by tricking the nation's munitions workers into thinking that it was later then they thought. This proved so successful that after the war factory owners insisted it stayed and factory owners and government across the world were quick to copy the idea. Then there is Greenwhich Mean Time (GMT) which is otherwise known as solar time because it's defined as the time it takes for the earth to spin relative to the sun. Seasons are of course measured by the time it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun. Unfortunately the rate at which the world spins changes so the measure of a day rarely matches up with the measure of a year. Therefore scientists decided to invent Universal Constant Time (UTC) which is also known as atomic time because it is defined as radiation moving between two hyper-fine levels of Caesium-133 atom 9,192, 631, 770 times.

Or to put it another way I'm getting stoned so you don't have to so I think live text commentary on a teeny tiny keypad might be a bit beyond me tonight but we'll see how things go.

17:20 on 9/9/12.