I've just spent a lovely, sunny morning in the Old English Garden in Battersea Park, which has recently been transformed by a team of disabled gardeners with funding from Jo Malone.

It is ravishingly pretty, the perfect hideaway garden - and if it were on my doorstep, I'd be there every lunchtime.

Before you get any ideas, it was designed to be high maintenance ... they need to keep a large team of gardeners busy and occupied.

There's always a catch, isn't there. And I thought it was all about drifting around in an Edwardian picture hat.

Now ... the Olympic torch passes within 30 yards of my front door in just over an hour's time.
Three ladies were sitting in deckchairs outside the church at lunchtime. I have close to zero-interest in the whole event ... shall I put my shoes on and wander out? Or not?

NEWS FLASH Well, I had a very good view from my perch in the churchyard ... but what a damp squib the torch relay was. A few jolly-looking policemen on motorbikes. A few cars with grubby-looking soft toys waving from the back. (I assume these had some significance that escapes me.) And nobody around here is daft enough to cheer for floats sponsored by banks or drinks conglomerates ... especially when they were feeble enough to disgrace the tail-end of a village carnival.
Was it worth a five-minute wait? Honestly, it wasn't.
However, heavy-handed commercialism wasn't invented by London 2012 Trademark Protected Inc.
During the 1908 Olympics, the drinks sponsor was OXO. And rivals Bovril constructed a Bovril Palace right outside the entrance to the White City stadium.