Untitled-in-sydney

Back from Melbourne, and what a nice place it is. Perhaps more on that later.

There is a perception that the English complain a lot. A perception summarized in the phrase "Whinging Poms". In this case (or at least in the case of the Commonwealth Games) the Australians are firmly seated in their glass houses.

I thought us Brits were good at bagging out random events, but let me tell you we've some competition from down-under. "Not relevant", "too expensive", "full of darkies", "second class Olympics" and so on.

Granted the games are expensive, but they're also quite a spectacle and like the Olympics to tend to polish up the local infrastructure a bit.

We went to see the Rugby 7's. Naturally, in the finals New Zealand ultimately won. Prior to that though (and in the bit of the competition that we actually saw) England got a right old scare from the Samoans and scraped through with a try in the last 40 seconds of the game.

Nevertheless, you can't help feeling that some of the complaints were a bit self-inflicted and this is were my whinging comes in.

At the entrance there's a bag search, which all things considered is quite ok. Next to the bag search is a list, a very loooong list, of things that are prohibited. Temporary signage, suspended seating, booze, air horns, cameras with lenses exceeding 200mm, and on, and on the list went.

Didn't really care about signage and I left the air horn at home, but camera lenses >200mm. Apparently that constitutes "professional" equipment. After some weaseling by me they let me in, but still. 200mm in a football stadium = barely adequate photos if game is in your half of the pitch. It's not going to allow me to go into competition with Getty or Reuters.

That hurdle crossed, we found our seats got comfortable and went to get a pie and a beer. No more than 4 beers per person. Grrr. And not only that but they cannot even ring up more than four, so I had to pay for the clutch that Gillian had and my overspill separately. Grrr.

It just struck me as a bit odd. "Come to the games", they say, but "don't take any photos with a big camera and we'd rather that you missed a bunch of the action while on numerous beer runs".

Despite the snout of officialdom looming large, the game(s) themselves were rather good. I've done my bit for the Commonwealth, and then like a good Englishman, I've moaned about it.

The circle is complete.