For two weeks now, the Olympic Torch Relay has rumbled slowly upwards through Britain. Since it started at Land’s End, almost two million people have turned out to see a spectacle built largely around poignant symbolism, regular road closures and lots of free bottles of Coke. (If the past seven days have taught me anything, it’s that if you want poignant symbolism you usually have to stop traffic, and that very few people turn down free pop.)
This is not meant to sound cynical. The communities through which the relay has passed have been responsible for some of the funniest, sweetest insights into British life anyone could hope for. But to begin with, at least, Week Two offered die-hard relay sceptics something to cling to.
Matt Smith, the Doctor Who actor, officially set off from Cardiff Bay at 6.29am last Saturday, watched by thousands. Fair enough, Smith is a popular celebrity, Doctor Who is a popular programme, and that’s why so many people had come to cheer him on. When the torch reached Caerphilly Castle, again thousands of people were on hand to cheer, despite the absence of a Time Lord torchbearer. This was harder to explain: it was a sunny Saturday morning, so perhaps the masses might have been out and about armed with little Union Jacks anyway?
By the afternoon, though, the valleys of South Wales felt congested with traffic as people converged on small communities such as Ynyswen, Ogmore Vale, Bryncethin and Pyle to see the flame. Questions, finally, had to be asked. The most obvious one was “Hello. Why are you here?” And from Cardiff to Swansea to Aberystwyth to Bangor, Chester, Stoke, Bolton and finally Liverpool, the answer was always much the same: “Because it’s something I will never see again.”
In 2012, the idea that we may never experience something again seems weird. Even in recession, we’re used to the idea of having what we want when we want it. We can summon videos of anything on our phones the moment the thought enters our head, and what used to be “once-in-a-lifetime” holidays are now achievable every few years if you’re lucky. But the sight of a total stranger jogging for 300 metres through your village with a fiery gold stick will never, ever happen again, and it is proving a powerful, almost thrilling draw.
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For some, the sight was genuinely emotional: a chic, middle-aged woman in Chester walked off muttering, “I’m so happy I saw it. I’m so, so happy”, to nobody in particular. These statements of simple happiness, a happiness almost verging on relief, were voiced again and again.
What’s also clear is that the appeal of witnessing the Olympic flame is not limited to any particular person. Some spectators sat on the kerb and glugged Stella, some spectators sat in folding chairs and glugged Pimm’s (there was an heroic amount of glugging across the board, really). When the flame was carried to the summit of Snowdon, I met a group of soldiers from the Royal Artillery, Helmand veterans, who had climbed there to see it.
There was also a group of grandmothers enjoying a steam railway tour of Wales, and who had wanted to see precisely the same thing as the guys from 57 (Bhurtpore) Battery (the grannies, naturally, caught the train up). There’s not much in the Venn Diagram of Life that would cover both these parties, but the flame did. It was the same with local councillors and local oddballs with guitars, with the police and with gangs of teenagers. Everyone, for once, wanted the same thing.
And this cross-party consensus made for some genuinely intense celebrations. If the village of Dolgellau in Snowdonia wasn’t in a frenzy just before the Torch passed through, then I haven’t seen a frenzy (and I follow Leeds United away). Outside Kidwelly Castle, a crowd formed a circle around one young, nervous torchbearer, blowing whistles, banging inflatable noisemakers together and hooting at the sight of the flame raised high. Ignoring the cameraphones, there was something archaic and wild about the scene. It was almost frightening.
For all the excitement, though, I’m not convinced that enthusiasm for seeing the Olympic flame will be mirrored in enthusiasm for the Games themselves. When the flame passed through the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock, I met husband and wife John and Sylvia Disley, both track bronze medallists for Great Britain at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Back then, said John, “everyone in the stadium could recognise a good hop, step and a jump or a good javelin throw. And that won’t happen in London — 90 per cent of the people sitting there will have never seen an athletics match”.
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As we talked, the sponsors’ buses rolled past, blaring out pop music and corny motivational babble designed to whip up the crowd. The concept of the Torch Relay didn’t seem to be something the Disleys particularly embraced. “It was thought up in Germany, 1936,” observed Sylvia. “It’s a bit of hype that’s kept up with the modern Games.”
Still, by following it around for a week, you can enjoy a crash course in British society: I’ve never seen so many boarded-up pubs, for instance. Or, for that matter, old people. Not necessarily elderly or infirm, but white-haired, retired and very much planning on sticking around and enjoying themselves.
Also, in speaking to crowds along the route, you’re constantly reminded just how much people move around Britain. I lost count of the number of times I’d try and speak to a “local”, only to find that they’d recently moved from Surrey to Rhyl, or from Newcastle to Chester, or from Liverpool to Wrexham. We’re not a big country at all, really, but we do slosh around a lot.
What else? Wales should probably put a tax on tattoos and use the proceeds to declare independence; we don’t, as a nation, take sun cream particularly seriously; more people have big, expensive cameras than you’d think; there will probably be several bunting millionaires come the end of the summer; we are really, really, really keen on the idea of fame. Wearing a white tracksuit and carrying a torch qualifies you for photographs and handshakes. A bit of attention, by the looks of it, is what makes you worthy of even more attention in Britain today.
Which is just why the Relay will continue to exceed everyone’s expectations. People will be increasingly anxious about missing it and want to see what the fuss is about. If you get the chance, try to see it somewhere you’ve actually not been before. Because the truth is that there’s no better time to investigate the people and places that make up Great Britain than when the Torch is coming through town.
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Week 2 in numbers
1,085m (3,560ft) highest point Torch taken: Snowdon
7 Castles listed on official Torch relay itinerary
5 Number of Anglo-Welsh border crossings
866 Torchbearers
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775.35 miles
22.84 miles travelled by steam train