I admit I enjoyed the Queen coming in to Olympic Stadium by helicopter as much as the next one – and was a bit amused at those who thought she really took the parachute jump. However, I knew even more that we were in for a good show when the words popped up on the screen directing us “Second to the right. Straight on to morning.”
I thought it quite clever of the British to use the Olympic venue to remind us of the characters and stories they’ve brought us from Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling. The people who’ve inhabited their stories are household names that we have enjoyed loving and hating. Some of us may remember and relate to the ones in the children’s nightmares – Alice’s Wonderland villains, Captain 
Hook, Voldemort, and Cruella de Ville. Thank goodness, even in our darkest literary night, the Brits have given us Mary Poppins to dispel the evil!
Now I’m off for my morning-rise-to-bedtime addiction of watching the competitions and listening to the stories of the 
athletes. In tribute to all of them, I’ve added a double-decker London bus to my seasonal bookshelf display and have my vehicles driving on the left side of the road.