I'm so glad we've stopped bitching, whinging, carping and moaning about the Olympics. The opening ceremony turned out to be an uncharacteristic British success and now everyone's got behind the Games. I like to think I was there before last Friday. I may be in what I euphemistically refer to as "the start-up phase" of Geoffrey Wadhurst Coaching Limited and, due to financial constraint, have therefore excluded themselves from the ticketing process; nevertheless, there is much in which to participate. Indeed, the Marshallswick Lawn Tennis Club held an opening ceremony party last Friday evening. Naturally, I found myself helping out behind the bar.
It was this positive spirit that I wanted to imbue in my long-term - but cynical - friend Derek when we had a rare face-to-face meeting in central London the morning of the opening ceremony. Derek, you may remember, left a salaried job before the financial crisis to help set up a start-up called kerching.com - a voguish blend of social media and personal loans. Sadly, it never really got beyond the concept stage and Derek's been in something of a downward spiral ever since. Rather than embracing the new reality of social media and networking as I have tried to do, he has become tethered to his laptop, usually unshaven and in his dressing gown, and communicating only via Skype. Like an impoverished Trolloppian curate, he always gives the impression that the waters are about to close over his head.
Face-to-face meetings are a rarity since he lives in deepest Surrey and I'm in St Albans but last Friday saw him travelling in for a rare job interview - an interim finance manager for an online debt counseling business. Out of the employment market for several years, Derek is understandably a bag of nerves and so we met at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall for a bit of interview coaching. Pro bono, of course.
Seated opposite one another across one of the tiny reproduction card tables they have in the infamously crowded "Directors' Lounge", we sipped tea (£6.95) as I tried to steel him for his imminent ordeal. In the flesh, he was more cynical than ever and what drew his fire this particular morning was the imminent arrival of the games. He muttered an interminable litany of familiar complaints including security, brand policing, plastic Brits and missiles on roof-tops (all now forgotten, of course).
As it turned out, the prism through which Derek had chosen to view London 2012 proved the ideal "jumping-off point" for our coaching session. In an inspired "Dead Poets" moment of creativity, I decided to abandon the IoD and took Derek out on to the sun-kissed streets of our capital. "Follow me!" I said, hoping to rouse him from his glass-half-empty inertia.
A short stroll away, we caught a glimpse through the highly secure cordon of the beach volleyball court on Horse Guards Parade with magnificently tiered seating for fifteen thousand. In the streets around us, bedecked with Olympic-themed bunting, the whole City seemed alive with joy. A gang of jogging guardsmen exchanged shouts with taxi-drivers.
Derek seemed to be coming around and for a minute I felt he was carrying his head a little higher. That is until we traversed Pall Mall at a zebra crossing and a couple of tourists on Boris Bikes zipped past us going the wrong way. They missed Derek by a whisker; slightly shaken, he sat down on the kerb.
A policeman on foot had caught up with the tourists and explained where they'd gone wrong. The tourists nodded contritely and waved cheerfully at us.
The policeman, unfazed, wandered over to us and we assured him no harm had been done. He beamed at us happily.
"It could have been worse, sir," he said to me. "We've just had an entire Chinese family on these bikes go the wrong way round Hyde Park Corner."
I looked at Derek. "See? This is the attitude I'm talking about. Not a negative thought in sight."
The policeman smiled at us and pushed his helmet back on his forehead. "Far from it, sir. Half a million tourists; eight thousand Boris Bikes. What could possibly go wrong?"