Part 5: One Big Family

(Our sanctuary!) 

You'll be happy to hear the room key card crisis was averted thanks to a very understanding receptionist. I was informed of this halfway back to the hostel and, by this point, Glasgow had stepped up the intensity on the weather front, obviously deciding it would be misleading to allow all the Games visitors to believe this was a warm, sunny place to visit in the summer. Now, I'm from around Dundee and I thought we got rain pretty bad, but that notion was quickly dispelled as a squelched back up the street, umbrella in front of me acting as a shield against the sheets - no really, sheets - of water being hurled from the sky. Arriving at the Media Hub, I made a beeline for the toilets to try and sort myself out - it was still morning for God's sake, I couldn't be this much of a mess this early! With some creative use of a roll of toilet paper and a very temperamental Dyson hand-drier (he should have stuck to vacuum cleaners), I was less sodden, more damp and only looked like I'd been pulled through a hedge backwards, not steam-rollered multiple times.
But it was all good, I had photos from a whole host of volunteers, the fantastic array of events being held on Glasgow Green, and had seen the finish of the Women's Road Race Finals, all before eleven o'clock.
The rest of the team were making themselves at home in one of the lounges in the Media Hub amidst comfy sofas, free coffee and biscuits and a large screen broadcasting all the Games' latest. I can't actually praise Destination Media Hub enough - they were amazing and I only wish we could have spent more time there. A collaboration of Visit Scotland, Visit Britain and People Make Glasgow, they provided the place to be for all press and media during the Glasgow 2014 Games. I mean, what could possibly get a journalist more excited than the prospect of free coffee and wifi? Plus, the people running it were so friendly they genuinely made it feel like a home from home.
The rest of the day was filled with dashing out between episodes of torrential rain to film and interview spectators and athletes on the streets, and regularly tuning into the Men's Road Race coverage to take pity on the drenched cyclists. The most uplifting thing had to be speaking to the people lining the streets, watching the race. You would have been hard pushed to find a miserable face, despite the rain, and not one person had a bad word to say about Glasgow nor the Games. 'Amazing', 'awesome' and 'best ever' featured regularly on our camera and, by the time we got back to the Media Hub, it wasn't difficult to imagine we had enough footage to really make the best of our funding.
Come the end of the day, and after the last road race had finished, the sky had finally cleared up and my shoes had dried out. We'd had word Robert's cousin, a member of a Scottish band, would be playing at a nearby bar and so we dropped into the quaint little pub on the way home. When I say 'little', what I actually mean is it started off looking little until we'd gone up and down several sets of gnarled wooden staircases, and completely lost our bearings in a place I can only compare to something out of 'The Hobbit'. It was amazing. If only we had a Waxy O'Conner's in Dundee, my life would be complete.
Once we'd settled ourselves into one of the many nooks and crannies of the pub, we quickly found ourselves striking up a conversation with a man and his girlfriend sitting at a nearby 'Game of Thrones' style bench and table. Of all the people to stumble upon, it turned out we were talking to Clinton Purnell, one of Wales' best gymnasts who had narrowly missed out on a medal only days previously. It seemed a fitting way to end our trip, speaking to an athlete who could tell us not only that Glasgow as a venue was superior to anything he'd experienced before but, and I quote, 'it felt like one big family'.
Now that should be on a brochure somewhere...