MY GLASGOW 2014 JOURNEY - Part 4: Being a spectator

The Clyde Auditorium and the SSE Hydro were just
two of the many venues across Glasgow and Scotland
hosting sporting events for the 20th Commonwealth Games.

This is the penultimate part of my overall reflection of Glasgow 2014. In this blog entry, I take a look back at my experience of being a spectator at a variety of events during the Commonwealth Games.

I was lucky to go and see the badminton, squash, para-sport powerlifting and the athletics as far as events were concerned and ultimately the big one I went to was the Closing Ceremony which I was delighted to be at. But I'll start with the sporting events.

The first one I went to was the badminton which took place at the Emirates Arena in Dalmarnock. The first thing you notice about the Emirates Arena is how massive the venue is. It's absolutely huge. And although it wasn't the first time I was in that venue, I sensed how massive this venue really was. And it was absolutely incredible, especially with the badminton taking place there, because I recall seeing on the television beforehand that there was more than one badminton match taking place at the same time. But in my case when I went to see the badminton on the 27th July, there was only one match taking place and I remember it was in the evening. And that was a match between England and India.

The weekend of the 2nd and 3rd August, of which I like to call it the "super weekend" - it was full of events for the Saturday and Sunday. The first of those events was the para-sport powerlifting and I remember watching the English athlete Ali Jawad breaking the world record with one of his lifts and then he broke his own newly set world record - he broke the world record twice in one session which was absolutely extraordinary. It wasn't a sell out for that event, but the atmosphere was absolutely extraordinary and the first sign of this was when the Glasgow 2014 mascot Clyde appeared out of nowhere onto the stage and started singing and got the audience signing and dancing along. That was quite extraordinary to watch and very amusing and light hearted as well.

Later on that evening, there was the three of us - my brother, I and a friend. We went to the athletics at Hampden Park. It was absolutely incredible, because you got this sense that Hampden Park had transformed like magic from what was a football stadium into this athletics arena and you can tell the crowd were really up for it, even though it was raining and it was grey in the skies and the track was wet and that was a bit annoying.

I was a bit disappointed that night, because I didn't see much of Team Scotland prosper on the night which was a bit sad because I wanted to see some medals from my country. Having said that, we did see a certain Mr Bolt compete for Jamaica and he was very entertaining as always. He got the crowd going and surprise, surprise he succeeded yet again and Jamaica scored successfully once again in the athletics (I'm saying that in terms of medals). It was just an absolutely brilliant night for Jamaica. It was just a great night watching a variety of events like the triple jump, javelin, the relay finals and the long distance finals.

I remember we headed to Scotstoun for the squash for the Sunday of that "super weekend" and we (my brother and I) were a bit late for the start actually which was a bit frustrating and embarrassing - it was my fault, because I'd arrived a bit late into Glasgow from Fife and completely didn't get my facts right when it came to getting the right train to Scotstoun. Nonetheless, we got there and we stayed there for a good six hours I think, because there were a lot of final matches being played and we saw a variety of teams playing like Australia and England.

It was great to watch, because squash is one of these sports like badminton which is very fast paced and ruthless to an extent - I'm not implying that the athletes are necessarily ruthless. They are very good natured and have respect for each other, but the velocity of the sport is very fast (squash and badminton fit into that category). We saw a great mixture of competition taking place which was great and eye opening as well. There was a really good atmosphere around Scotstoun.

Afterwards, we rushed back into the city centre and my brother and I met our father and a friend of ours who came to join us for the closing ceremony for that evening. I remember getting a bit agitated, because our friend who was coming in from the west of the city was held up in the train delays heading into Glasgow city centre so I saw all these folk heading into the shuttle buses at Buchanan Bus Station and there I was sitting down in the station thinking, "oh my God we need to get away, because we are going to be late!" - I didn't shout this out in public, because I didn't want to cause any embarrassment.

Nonetheless, we all united and we boarded the shuttle bus and headed to Hampden Park. We arrived very early actually, we arrived around an hour before the start of the actual closing ceremony so I was very chuffed and relieved that we were in our seats before then.

I remember seeing all these tents all over the pitch and I was trying to find out at first what was going on (what were we going to expect?). Fast forward to nine o'clock then the closing ceremony took place and then suddenly I can see all these athletes running out of their tents with absolutely no hint of hesitation, running towards the stage and the stadium absolutely lit up in sound and light and it was just...everybody started going into song and everybody started getting all excited and all these saltires waved across the stadium.

It was a great start to the closing ceremony and it was quite a musical closing ceremony if I rightly remember  - it was almost like being at a concert.

I remember notably HRH Prince Imran saying that the Commonwealth Games was "pure, dead brilliant" and the whole crowd just loved it. There was probably not one person in the stadium who didn't smile at that and it was just absolutely marvellous.

The obvious lowlight was when Prince Edward said the Commonwealth Games were closed. Everybody was very gutted about that, but that was going to inevitably happen.

But I think the highlight of the night for me came at the very end when everybody started to sing "Caledonia" along with Deacon Blue and then when all the acts united together on the stage and started singing "Auld Lang Syne" and then suddenly you can see all around, everybody holding hands together singing that song and it was absolutely a sight to behold.

It's something I have never ever seen in my life, through my own two eyes and just seeing that was so special. It was the best show I have ever witnessed in the whole of my entire life and to be honest I don't think there's going to be very much that beats it, because it was just that special and adding the fact that nearly a billion people (not a million, a billion) all over this planet watched that show - I mean it just summed up how vital and important this event was and how significant it was as well and it was just such a great night.

The other two things I will say - I thought the security team were fantastic. I thought the police, army and other organisations who helped out with the security and looking after everybody - I thought that they were absolutely amazing.

The second thing I will mention, I thought the transport was just fantastic. The trains, albeit some of them were a few minutes late because of high demand, they still ran very well and the shuttle buses especially from Hampden back to the city centre were absolutely fantastic.

A superb experience as a spectator at Glasgow 2014. It's a huge credit to them and all the organisers for how brilliant the experience was and I just loved it.

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.