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An Olympic effort to pretend this is not grubby Stratford
By Suzanne Harrington
TONIGHT’S the night, people.
There will be two billion of us worldwide watching the Olympic opening ceremony, as it is brought to you from a formerly horrid patch of east London where nobody ever went unless to buy drugs (even then, only if there were none available anywhere else).Stratford is proof that if you leave a vast post-industrial wasteland to rot in poverty for long enough, someone will build an Olympic site on it. It is surreal, the transformation. Where there were kebab shops, now there is Prada.
Where there were squats, now there is the giant Zaha Hadid Olympic pool. Where there was a pub with lunch-time strippers, now there are gated apartments.
And what was, until today, my friend W’s council-flat balcony on the 12th floor of an unlovely tower block, is now a prime viewing platform for tonight’s global event. Previously overlooking a dirty canal full of dead shopping trolleys (and the occasional dead body), the hideousness of the Bow flyover (Dizzee Rascal comes from just down the road) and vast tracts of ugly, polluted nothingness, W’s flat now overlooks the most about-to-be-looked-at event on the planet. Disappointingly, there are no surface-to-air missiles on his building’s roof.
Because, suddenly, this balcony is THE place to be. If he moves his bicycle a bit to the left and rearranges the house plants (covered in Olympic-site dust for some time now, but as tough and durable as east-enders themselves), there’ll be enough room for all of us to squash in and watch the fireworks from very close range. We’ll have the telly on for back-up, obviously, because, although his tower block is next to the site, it’s not near enough to see close-ups or hear the commentary.
There will be a gang of us. None of us lives in Stratford anymore, having sensibly decamped to greener, cleaner, nicer places — but suddenly, rancid old Stratford is the centre of the universe — at least, for the next few weeks. You hear of the parents of Olympic competitors not being able to afford to stay in east London, and having to sleep in camper vans, instead. Even the architect, Zaha Hadid, has not been invited to a single swimming event in the pool she designed. People are paying a grand for tickets to events like kayaking or power-knitting, or whatever. You can’t pay with anything that isn’t Visa, and you can’t buy chips that aren’t McDonalds.
And in the middle of it all is my friend W, who has lived in the same council flat forever, because it is cheap. He could have rented it out for squillions for the duration of the Games, but he can’t be bothered. Instead, he sits on his balcony, laughing at the concept of something as healthy as a global sporting event being sponsored by burgers, chips, chocolate and Coke. It really is surreal.