London is Quiet

It is true, central London is very quiet and delightful to visit at the moment. Everyone has gone to the Olympics.
The Impressionist exhibition  in the Sackler rooms at the Royal Academy,Picadilly, is one of the best I have ever seen with some particularly lovely Renoir portraits.
The Summer Exhibition  has the usual exhibits by favourite old dears like Ken Howard  but the rest is pretentious rubbish especially the sculpture-- suggest they load it into a skip and burn it.

 Bought T. a tie  for his birthday from one of those expensive shops in Jermyn Street.

Olympic Ticket Checker

This website has now been blocked by Locog. I will leave it on as it may be useful to some people.
I.O.C. and their geriatric members should be sent to retirement homes where they belong.This lot and Locog have a lot to answer for over the Olympic ticketing fiasco.
checker.benmarshinteractive.com

Olympic Ticket Collection Stratford Gate

Went to collect my tickets from the Stratford Gate Box Office yesterday.
About 15 minutes walk from the tube station ,there is no escape from the route through Westfield shopping centre.
Badly signed (and only in English) we had to ask someone for directions;this ticket office consists of a few scruffy portacabins. There is no shelter from the elements for people waiting , you know it is your turn when one of the assistants sticks an arm out of the window and waves.

There were some ugly scenes as people without the correct documents were refused their ticket allocation

You need:

Confirmation email, reference number,credit card used to buy them with,identity document--passport is safest.

Allow a lot of time if you have not collected your tickets yet and are planning to collect them on the day you are going to use them

They are going to need the army , this could become a disorderly mess.

More hints: this is what I would take when going to the Olympic Park

• Wear comfortable shoes, there is a lot of walking--toes can get squashed  in flip flops and open sandals in crowds especially on the tube
• Sun screen, sun glasses,sun hat if hot and sunny
• Light weight sweater-- air conditioning can feel chilly
• Plastic cover up if wet-- noticed Primark had some good quality but cheap stuff a few days ago
• very small first aid kit + paracetamol for inevetable head ache
• Something to chew like polo mints
• Water but not sure what is /is not permitted so check on this.

Olympic Tickets at Last from the Website

I have spent days trying to get tickets after receiving emails from the Olympic Website.I have managed to get 4  costing £50 each
If you are trying to do this , this is what I worked out

1. Make sure you are registered with an account-- they only accept payment by Visa cards.
2. The extra tickets come online about 3. 30 -4 pm- be ready , logged into the page, Visa card beside you.
3. On the listing page select; Select a sport ,Venue: Olympic Park , All Times, All Events, and dates in the later part of the times e.g. 2 -12 August
4.Several pages appeared but I went to the numbers later on the page (4 ) -there seems to be quite a bit of handball ( Copper Box venue)
5 Choose fast--you have only 10 minutes to complete the transaction.
Follow the prompts through the request , search and final transaction process
6.They also ask you to create a password-- be ready for this, the minutes are ticking away
7.This may not work for everyone but it may be worth a try so good luck
8 That was the good news , now I have to go to the Stratford  box office  to collect them.

Sunday 4pm just tried this-- quite a lot more tickets have just come online

Olympic Tickets Bullshit

 I have received emails several times from the official Olympic site telling me that more tickets are available.
I have wasted hours going through the search and request process and every time it comes to the checkout the tickets described are not available.

What is going on? the whole thing is a shambles, why do they email me when the claim that there are tickets available is clearly untrue-- oh apart from football in remote locations no one wants to see.

There are some extortionate hotel packages costing £thousands-- check in time 3p.m. check out 9a.m.

The Rip -Off Olympics 2012