I`VE TRIED, MY GOD I`VE TRIED..

Roll up, roll up!!   The day after tomorrow the Coca~Cola, Bank of Scotland, Samsung Olympic Torch relay scuttles through this part of Kent and we are being encouraged to turn out and see it.   Well, I`ve tried, my God I`ve tried, but I just can`t get any enthusiasm for it.   I just can`t see the attraction of turning out to stand at the roadside to catch a fleeting glimpse of a bit of flame on a fancy stick.

Maybe it would be a little more attractive if the bit of flame was actually the one sparked off by the Vestal Virgins back in Greece a few weeks ago.  But it`s not.   It keeps going out and has had to be replaced by a stunt flame - a body double - ignited not by rubbing two boy scouts together but, I imagine, by some attendant getting out his Ronson.  

Today the torch has wended its way through bits of Sussex and quite a bit of Kent  including a nine mile stretch in a tunnel, going aboard a boat and finally docking in Dover for the night.   Its passage has been the main item of local radio and television news with a succession of gushing presenters becoming positively orgasmic.   My strong suspicion is that an edict has come down from on high for the media to whip up enthusiasm for this bizarre spectacle, resulting in masses of people displaying extraordinary excitement whilst leaving the more discerning of us to see through the façade of commercially driven faux significance.

It gets worse.   Tomorrow, the relay goes through Margate and guess who is among the torch bearers?   Yes, you`ve got it, none other than the seemingly inescapable Tracey Emin, `artist` extradordinaire (have you seen some of her extraordinary efforts?) and the only vaguely famous person ever to emerge from Margate.   

I think they got it right back in 1948, when the relay was simply that - a proper relay of runners from local athletic clubs passing the baton between them all the way from Dover to London non-stop, through the night, along the most direct route with no ballyhoo, no commercial sponsorship, no whipped up false enthusiasm, just doing the job with a quiet dignity that is the antithesis of the spectacle we`re seeing this time.   So no, I won`t bother and try as I might I have failed dismally to get remotely interested in it at all.