MY GLASGOW 2014 JOURNEY - Part 3: Life as a Clyde-sider

My volunteering as a Clyde-sider was spent on Tayside
at the Apex Hotel which is near the Tay Road Bridge in Dundee.
Around 400 athletes were based there during the Commonwealth
Games.

In my previous blog post, I explored how I managed to land the opportunity of becoming a Clyde-sider volunteer for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. In the third of my series of reflections, I look back at my time volunteering on Tayside.

As far as where I was based was concerned, I didn't care as long I was playing some role even if it was making a cup of tea or coffee then so what? It doesn't bother me. But I got a more prominent role than that which was very good.

After I accepted the role of Clyde-sider, I started attending a series of training sessions. I remember two of them as far as my memory is concerned - the problem is I have got a memory which is the size of a fish and no disrespect to sea animals or fish, because they're lovely but my memory is terrible at times. I remember two training sessions in particular that I took part in...in fact no make that three, because I remember the third one now.

The two I firstly remembered was the one at Hampden which was more of the specific training in transportation, which everyone involved from transportation got involved in for the whole of the Commonwealth Games and all of the venues and it was a limited number of us, I think around fifty of us, in this one big room at Hampden. So I'm not sure if they had other training sessions on - I think they did from what I remember when I booked the sessions on the volunteer portal.

The other one I remember was up at the Apex Hotel in Dundee, where I was based. We (myself and my colleagues who became friends of mine as our time volunteering went on) met our bosses who were fantastic people, absolutely fantastic people and really, really good people and I got a really good sense that we were going to be a great team and that we were going to be a very cohesive team and a strong, closely knitted team.

The third session that I've just remembered and I cannot believe it didn't come up in my memory first of all was the orientation training up at the Emirates Arena in Dalmarnock (I'm going back the way time wise as it was one of the first sessions I went to). I remember seeing Clyde (the Glasgow 2014 mascot) running around the place amusing everybody. And I remember Romeo as well, also known as David Farrell who now presents on STV Glasgow and who used to do a programme called In:Demand on Radio Clyde which used to be broadcast on all of the Bauer stations (across Scotland) so you're talking about Radio Forth, Radio Tay, Radio Northsound and all that. Romeo was his nickname and David Farrell was the MC/compére for the event and his chat was absolutely brilliant and the banter was absolutely enjoyable and everybody was having a good time.

There was about a few thousand of us and we weren't all in transportation Clyde-sider volunteers, there was quite a lot of us in different roles so we had people working in the media centre, people volunteering at the venues, some volunteering in Edinburgh, some volunteering in Dundee and up at Barry Buddon at well (as the shooting event was taking place there). We met all the main staff who gave us a good talk (we didn't meet them in person, we just saw them in the middle of the arena talking to us).

So moving on to the time that I actually volunteered properly as a Clyde-sider, I remember having a mixture of shifts which varied from me starting as early as 6:30am to as late as 9:00pm. I never did any nightshifts as such. I had shifts that were either morning (finishing at lunchtime normally) or afternoon/evening. I really had a good mixture of them and I was responsible for transport. I didn't drive, but I was more responsible for the logistics of the transportation at the Apex Hotel in Dundee where half the athletes were staying for the shooting (at Barry Buddon).

We had regular buses travelling between the Apex Hotel and Barry Buddon so that the athletes could commute between the two venues. And we also had what was called inter-city buses so they would stop between Dundee and Glasgow and go up to Carnoustie as well and during the later part of my volunteering, they would also go to Barry Buddon as well. There was a lot of flexibility in choice for the athletes to choose which transportation they wanted to take according to their needs.

And we also had special cars as well - we had a fleet of cars that were regularly utilised during the Commonwealth Games. We had special drivers, who were Clyde-siders as well, and they drove the athletes around and if say one of the scheduled buses was not appropriate or suitable for someone to move around between the different venues during Glasgow 2014 then we could potentially book them a car or reasonable transportation facilities in order to facilitate their needs.

I also did other tasks such as displaying timetables and making sure the right information was on display and was being fed to the athletes and everyone else involved in the Commonwealth Games and also to answer enquiries. We had our own transportation desk at the Apex Hotel which was great, because it was just the one stop that anybody could make within the Apex Hotel to actually ask us about any transportation needs or anything like that.

And that was really it. It was quite a relaxed role that I had, but it was a very important one as well. We had to get things right and we had to make sure the the buses left on time and keep transportation moving which was important.

The best thing about being a Clyde-sider was making new friends and just knowing that my role was valued and that my input was valued in terms of helping out with the delivery of Glasgow 2014.