Adele Ferguson

I CONFESS that I turned the television set off and hit the sack as the Andorra athletes were marching into the stadium for the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics.

I knew there were 90 some countries yet to follow with the United States near the end and Paul McCartney as the piece de resistance of the finale, but I was already bored stiff. England had a tough act to follow in being expected to if not exceed, at least match the splendor of what China did but I expected better. Some of the best movies ever made have been English films and some of the best actors, not to mention programs such as Upstairs, Downstairs, As Time Goes By, etc.

Most of what I saw was a vast jumble of people of all stripes mixing in and out while the narrator tried to explain this was a history of the growth of England from farmland to industrial prominence to celebrating their national health act (???).

THE ONLY BRIGHT spot in the whole thing was Daniel Craig playing James Bond to Queen Elizabeth II with that stunt where they were supposed to be parachuting out of a helicopter. That was good.

I must admit though that my granddaughter, aged 10, thought the show was terrific. She didn’t see it with me. She saw it at her home.

“I loved the part where they had the kids in the beds,” she told me. “And I loved Mary Poppins.” I didn’t see Mary Poppins, I said. What did she do?

“Oh she came down out of the sky,” said Carli. “A whole bunch of Mary Poppins.” Oh, I said. I do recall a bunch of people coming down out of the sky but I didn’t know who they were. I was looking for James Bond and Queen Elizabeth.

CARLI LIKED the rest of the show too although she wasn’t allowed to stay up for the whole thing. She’s a very bright little girl. I asked her if they discussed the elections at her school and she said yes. Who, I asked, would you vote for for president?

“The one who lets us keep our guns,” she said.

I guess that was to be expected. Carli comes from a clan of hunters and fishermen and has completed a training course for young would-be hunters. She aspires to shoot a deer this year. Her brother, just two years older, shot his first deer last year, a spike.

Being more of a fan for the Winter Olympics than the summer games, I haven’t watched events. I hear the results the next morning on the news. I also got to hear a replay of Paul McCartney murdering “Hey Jude,” the song he wrote back when he was an active Beatle and agreed with critics that he should probably retire.

Devoted fans blamed his poor singing job on inhalation of smoke that filled the stadium from some source near him.

ANYWAY, MITT ROMNEY, who was in London on a trip to several countries, got almost as much publicity as the Olympics when he made the mistake of being truthful when asked about security arrangements for the games in London.

He wasn’t sure about security, he said, having heard and read in the news that the outfit hired to do that job was having a hard time finding enough people for the jobs and the English authorities had to call in some Army troops to lend a hand.

English media and some officials went nuts at Romney’s remarks as did our own media. Funny how our Obama-worshipping media practically buried the news about a much worse insult to the English when one of the first things done by the new president when he moved into the White House was to ship back to England the bust of Winston Churchill presented to President Bush after 9/11. I read later it was in response to England’s treatment of Kenya, home of Obama’s father.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)