My attempts to avoid the Olympics got off to a flying start on Saturday when the Coca-Cola © Olympic Coca-Cola © Torch Coca-Cola © Product of Hope was paraded past Glencoe.

While it was in Glencoe - which is dangerously near my house, I was half way across the country buying the usual boxes of tatty old  paperbacks and dubious Italian Eurosleeze DVDs from second-hand shops.  My day off.  So successful was my day off being that in the afternoon I ventured as far as the Big City.  Inverness! (pop. 58,963 - round here that's like Metropolis, Gotham City, and Greater LA combined.)  More tatty old  paperbacks!  More DVDs!  (I had a sandwich too!)  Eventually I got fed up with the mad giddy whirl of city life and headed for home. I decided to go by the shortest route.  A route which, if I had had the forethought to think about it for a few seconds, I would have eschewed it for a longer one*.  For on the way south, at Drumnadrochit to be precise (pop. 813 - told you), I encountered the the Official Coca-Cola © Olympic Coca-Cola © Torch Coca-Cola © Product of Hope Round Britain-athon coming the other way.  Buses, vans, thudding twat music shouted over by some halfwit local radio wannabee holding his microphone too close to his platitude dribbling gob (so all you heard was this shouty unintelligible babble) surrounded by the entire Northern Constabulary.  I have never seen so many policemen in one place.  I didn't know we had so many police vehicles in the Highlands.  It was incredible.  The first load I encountered were on motorbikes.  There was a whole display-team'sworth of the buggers, all flashing blue lights with their riders wildly gesticulating for oncoming vehicles like me to pull over and let the circus behind them get past.

Luckily I was right next to the bus stop.  (Or it might have been the other bus stop, I mean Drum' is a pretty big place. 813 people, wow!)  Anyway I pulled over, switched off the engine, and waited.  Got fed up with waiting, pulled out one of the staggering amount of tatty old paperbacks in the car and read for a bit till it was time to go.  I missed the Olympics by that much.  I was ordered to avoid it by a policeman.  That's my excuse.

Driving south I really felt sorry for the people trapped in the three mile tailback this farce was causing and got fed up with being amazed at the number of police vehicles parked in lay-bys. There were dozens of them.  Why?  What was going to happen?  This is the Highlands of Scotland.  Nothing ever happens here.  Even when something does happen nobody notices! How much is this police overtime costing?  Who is paying for all this?  Bet you it's not fucking Coca-Cola ©.

* I love the word 'eschewed',  it's almost as good as 'erstwhile'.