My father was phobic about sport. 13 stone aged 13, he genuinely saw sport as a form of torture at school. I only fully understood this during the "Sport for all" campaign during the 1970s, when I saw his violent reaction to the stickers that were everywhere.
So my house was a sport free zone, apart from a glorious few weeks every four years when my mother rebelled and had the Olympics on the telly. This made such a huge impression on me that aged six when my teacher asked me to draw me doing the job I wanted in my future, I drew myself swimming and on a podium collecting a gold medal.
"What is that?" asked my teacher in disgust.
"I want to be an Olympic swimmer when I grow up."
"That's not a job," she said scornfully. "What do you want to do as a job?"
"I don't know," I replied. "All I want to do is be a swimmer."
"Look at what the other girls are drawing and choose one of those things," was her uninspired advice.
A biddable child, I looked at pictures of hairdressers, nurses and air hostesses drawn by my friends. There was even a traffic warden. I think that after a brief existentialist crisis, I went for police woman - it seemed marginally more adventurous.
Roll forward almost twenty years, and though I have not made it as a swimmer, I am still crazy about the Olympics. Manchester has bid to host the 2000 games, but it seems a foregone conclusion that Beijing will win the bid. I am working in Hong Kong, and excitement is intense. The whole of Tiananmen Square, and even large parts of the rest of the country from Tibet to Hong Kong, are set to explode in fireworks when the bid is announced. I watch Tiananmen Square and the People's Congress on TV as the announcement is made. "Beijing" says the announcer and people are hugging each other and crying wih happiness, but that was just the intro, announcing all the bidders in alphabetical order. Sydney won it. It was as if the shining light of the Olympic torch had been extinguished all across China. The Hong Kong papers the next day really struggled to make the best of it. Then I saw a piece on BBC World showing the reaction in Manchester. A crowd of thousands singing "Always look on the bright side of life," led by Mr Blobby. It was then that I first thought that a UK Olympics would be quite special.
Roll forward to July 5th 2005 and I am on the tube back from Wimbledon,surrounded by sodden tennis fans. We have sat all afternoon in the rain on Centre Court(pre roof). But in that time the clouds cleared for 40 minutes and we saw a whole women's semi-final. Sharapova won. Seven hours in the rain,forty minutes of tennis. "We were so lucky," beamed a woman,and the entire carriage nodded in agreement - such a great match.
In a rush of solidarity with the patient fans around me who didn't expect much, but were so positive and just so ... nice ...
I thought- "We DESERVE the Olympics! We will be the best hosts ever."
And I still cannot watch that announcement on July 6th 2005 without crying. It was so unexpected,Paris were the favourites, but the team worked really hard to prove we deserved it to, "Inspire a generation."
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