Sunday 19 August 2012

My second Olympic memory . . .

I happened to be in Penzance when Britain (I can't help it, I find it too hard to type Team GB) won its first gold medal. 

A local girl had won it. I had myself photographed in front of the gold post box but I don't have that picture to hand. What I do have, though, is a picture of that gold winner's parental business. It's an ice cream shop in Newlyn. 

Here is the shop.



And here is the celebratory notice put up by her parents. It's a crop from the previous photograph. I would have got closer but that would have involved standing in the middle of a busy and narrow road. Also, there was so much sun falling on my camera that I couldn't see what I was photographing. It was just point, pause, click, hope.


One Yes, it is a piece of cardboard with Gold written on it, not very well.

Two Yes, it is me in the reflection.

Three No, I can't make up my mind either about what I feel about the display. 

These are the possibilities, I guess . . .
a) What kind of parents (whose daughter has just won an Olympic gold medal) can't be bothered to do more than reuse an old scrap of ice cream material packaging?
b) Is it perhaps a moving antidote to the hi-octanity of other celebrations just about everywhere else?
c) Do I like its modesty and amateurism in an embarrassingly pomo manner?

PS Truth be told, I don't like the ice cream much. It only comes in one flavour — vanilla, they call it, but white would be a better description. It's made with milk rather than cream. The only person I know who likes it — or claims to like it — is a Famous Five-ist.