XVIII Commonwealth Games Blog

XVIII Commonwealth Games
Blog: 23rd March 2006

XVIII Commonwealth Games Blog: 23rd March 2006

A day in the life of a Games journalist isn’t quite as glamorous as it may seem. I’m not sure I want to shatter all those illusions. And I know I will never make anyone back home in London feel sorry for me when I’m reporting about baking Australian sunshine while they shiver in the most relentlessly frosty winter in Britain since record-keeping began in 1066, or whenever it was.

The fact is, it’s great to be here! But I just wish there were five or six hour hours in the day - mainly so I could get some sleep. One of the characteristics of these kinds of projects is the way the days start very early and end very late. I have to be bright and perky to do a live breakfast radio show report at 7am every morning. But I usually don’t get back to my room after the evening competition and a bit of socialising until well after midnight - which is when prepare that report. Five hours of sleep is fine for two or three nights, but when you stretch that over two weeks you start feeling like the walking undead.

So generally, after the 7am report I flop back in bed for an hour or so. This is one of the benefits of modern technology that allows me to do my work and reporting right from my room on a networked computer. My second rising is usually a little more bleary-eyed than the first, and I settle in to write the day’s main report - a three-minute roundup of news and information that I also have to record as a voice report by noon.

The last two days this has been a challenge, as at precisely 11.45 the gardeners outside the window fire up their leaf blower and begin chasing leaves and dirt around the grounds for an hour, pushing them this way and that, but never bothering to actually pick anything up. Yesterday this only interrupted the final story of my news roundup. Today they started the machine exactly as I was starting to record, sending me into a sleep-deprived rage (it doesn’t take much when I’m in this condition - I had a meltdown yesterday over the fact that I couldn’t find matches to light the stove).

After stomping around for about half an hour, the sound ceased and I noticed the offending gardener merrily pruning some roses, so I quickly recorded my report in pristine background silence.

After that’s done, I write this blog, work on a few other freelance jobs I brought with me to Australia (what was I thinking), then finally head into town to catch up on the Games action and atmosphere, which has been fantastic, and is likely to be even better now that it’s scorchingly hot weather out there.

I think I’m the veteran of the 2K Plus team here - I’ve covered six Olympics, one All Africa Games, various world championships in athletics and aquatics, and this is my second Commonwealth Games. I feel like I have it down to a system now, but that doesn’t mean I’m not exhausted. Or that I’m looking forward to returning to icy Britain on Monday.

Rich Cline.

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