Watching the exuberant closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games from Melbourne. (Note to American readers: the Commonwealth Games essentially involves all countries that used to be coloured pink on the map in the days of Empire. Except for the United States. We don’t invite you. You might win too many medals).

Lo and behold, arena fills with thousands of dancing Dame Edna Everage look-alikes, all waving gladioli.

Made me dream that the festivities for London Olympics in 2012 might feature thousands of schoolgirls holding crooked canes aloft, beaming a similar celebration of local culture around the world. The dance could involve them standing demurely with hands behind their backs, then bending over and touching their toes, then jumping slightly into the air at 20 second intervals, before momentarily pausing with hands on their heads and traipsing off-stage in unison holding their behinds.

I wonder whether the organising authorities are taking suggestions from the public yet?

(And by the way, in the unlikely event that anyone in Melbourne stumbles across this blog: what a truly fantastic job your city did with the Games).

and I’m now wondering about someone in the future googling “Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony Melbourne” and stumbling across this blog!

PS not that I’m using an old version of Microsoft Word to type this, or anything, but the spell-checker didn’t recognised either “blog” or “googling” in this entry. Time to upgrade?

-------

Now you can buy a book of the best entries from "The Spanking Writers".