Stiff upper lip maybe but Olympic excitement is palpable

Waking up every morning at the Royal Garden Hotel to the sun rising over Kensington Gardens is glorious. At first, a pale glow tinges the dawn sky and then like one of those slow switches, it turns orange, throwing the blueness of the sky into stark relief.

I’ve been incredibly lucky with the weather – this is the best of winter days, cold, crisp, sunny. Yesterday, I watched people play soccer, walk their children and dogs and have picnics (they are a hardy breed here).

“It was like this during Kate and William’s wedding,” said the London taxi driver who was taking me to Princess Garden in South Audley Street for a Sunday dim sum. “Not so cold but clear and crisp.” Kate and William are moving into the Kensington Palace after its renovations are completed in March. 

He’s been driving for 20 years and he, like the two other taxi drivers I met, are looking forward to the Olympics. The anticipation here is a bit understated – as you would expect from this nation – and not as in-your-face as it was in Beijing four years ago.

You hardly notice it as a visitor except for a few billboards here and there. But underneath the stiff upper lip, I sense a desperate longing for the Games to somehow put things right.

“It’s the biggest international event in London in my lifetime,” said my cabbie, who looks to be in his 50s. “We need it.”

He lives in Enfield and during the riots last year, he and his neighbours had to turn vigilantes to protect their families and property. “It was bad, we had to take the law into our own hands but if the police couldn’t protect us, we had to do it ourselves.”

Asking where I was from, he said, “I wished we had some of the controls you have out there. Societies need to have rules and people ought to respect them.”

The mood isn’t good here and who can blame anyone for being glum. Everyday the media is full of bad news and I wonder if the media doesn’t as much reflect the state of the nation but shapes the psyche of a nation.

If you get bad news everyday, you stay in a constant state of glum-ness. Yesterday morning, after an invigorating walk in the park, I returned to my room to read the newspapers.

The headlines screamed, “Eurozone back on brink”, “Peacocks on the brink of administration” and with a huge photo of a sinking ship plastered on the front page, “It was just like the Titanic”.

Last week, the public inquiry into the media practices sparked by the phone hacking scandal continued. Richard Desmond, owner of the Express newspapers, was on the stand and his testimony was fascinating to listen to.

“Everyone needs disciplining,” said my London cabbie when our conversation switched to the media.

“It’s like dogs, ain’t it?” he said as our taxi went round Kensington Gardens and there seemed to be more canines than humans. One woman was walking at least six dogs. “You have to discipline them, otherwise they get out of control.”

It was rather appropriate thus that evening, I attended a dinner at the Royal Courts Of Justice. Walking into the 19th century neo-gothic building with its majestic arches, an Englishman said to me, “You have to admit, we do old well.” (I have say they do cold well too because the building was freezing and most of us dined with our winter coats on.)

The building houses 88 different courts and we were given a tour of the Appeal Court – I love British courtroom dramas and this absolutely brought them to life for me. The case of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hung in Britain in 1945, was heard here.

“In France, it would have been a crime of passion,” said our guide. “But here, Ruth, when she confessed to saying she wanted to kill her lover for flinging his affairs in her face, was convicted and hung.”

Discipline was obviously not lacking in those days.

I leave London tonight with several invitations to come to the Olympics – from three cabbies and a young girl from the National Youth Theatre who performed at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. She will be among those who will perform for the athletes in London.

Her pride is palpable. “You must come. It will be the best ever.”