Book your ticket for a Park In Progress visit
Take an exciting behind-the-scenes visit to the Olympic Park construction site to see how the Park is being transformed into Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. From the moment you arrive, you’ll be part of the Onsite Team and will be issued with safety workwear. You’ll enjoy an exclusive opportunity to visit the UK’s tallest sculpture, the ArcelorMittal Orbit, with a chance to take in amazing views of the London skyline.*
Naturally, reading such a sentence on the official web site of the Park In Progress Tour*, the person who was so fond about Olympics would want to see how the places which were scenario of the sports events are progressively transformed. Even feeling whit anticipation the chance to see from close the developing of the work, almost feeling the chance to take part on it. If not why to write "be issued with safety workwear"? I'm almost able to imagine the brain of this person trying to work out which great jobs the gardening companies are carrying out. I can imagine the scenes which are running in his mind, from the secular tree lowered into its hole with huge cranes and futuristic machinery, to the group of gardeners carrying boxes of exotic plants on blossom. Someone could even arrive to imagine the gardeners adorned of garlands and daisy chains like happy satyrs moving from bed to bed, sowing in the wind seeds which will germinate so fast that you can see them growing. Even more there's the chance to visit "the UK’s tallest sculpture", the ArcelorMittal Orbit.
Watching it in this photo it seems much taller than the Olympic Stadium. In every photo you'll find it will seem much taller than the Olympic Stadium. What amazing landscape will be possible to watch from the top of it, the "amazing views of the London skyline."
In this way the tourist (generally Londoner) is persuaded to pay 15 pounds to make a round which last a little bit more than an hour. An hour spent mostly sitting inside a coach, coach which reaches few areas of the Park, since the site is whole work in progress and closed to the visitors, listening to I don't know what speech the guide is declaiming. Then, what does this tourist see? Nor gardeners moving gracefully among bushes and flower beds, nor the laying of mastodontic secular trees, and to be honest he doesn't see neither the flower beds. The few meadow remained are where the tourist can't go. He sees even few gardeners, since our number is really small compared to the number of all operatives. The tourist, seated inside the coach, which proceeds to a speed of 15 miles per hour, without stopping in any place since would be on the way of operative vehicles, the tourist sees on the right hand side and on the left hand side, in front of himself and behind himself, road work without an end. The original roads are cut, changed, dug and paved again, often without a visible reason. The many yards which received food stands and thousands of visitors during the Games are removed to make room to new lawn. And to new buildings, I've just found out today. Everywhere there are trucks and dumpers full of soil or construction waste. There are cranes lifting parts of coming down bridges, jackhammers connected to 4 tons excavators shattering the concrete and the silence, and then cranes again to load on lorries the metallic frames. The tourist sees just builders wearing high visible jackets, once upon a time yellow or orange, now just black of dirt because these builders don't wash them once every four months or more.
And the "being a part of the On Site Team"? The tourist is equipped whit a white helmet and he wear it to cover the 30 meters between the coach and the Orbit access. Everything, obviously, is just a scenic design, since that area is PPE free, nobody needs to wear the Personal Protection Equipment. That tourist who is lucky (the member of a founding Association) is leaded in a wider tour and can see some completed areas, those areas which have been handed over to the maintenance company, which probably (alas!) will manage the Park for the next 10 years. Tour guides of this extra for few chosen are the gardeners of the maintenance company. But to call them gardeners is too much. Don't ask to them a plant name, how to prune a rose or when is the right time to plant an holm oak. I worked with them and I know each one of them. They can't distinguish an herbaceous from a weed**. More then gardeners are lawnmower men. Who has the chance to take part in this special tour, obviously, is not annoyed whit white helmets.
But coming back to our tourist, that one who paid 15 pounds and till now has made a round on the coach watching the same he could have watched paying the 1 pound and 40 pence of the red bus ticket. Luckily for him, there's always the Orbit, "the UK’s tallest sculpture". Apart that I have a different concept of "sculpture", but the Orbit is not really taller than the Olympic Stadium which it stands aside. Practically the Stadium closes the view westwards, where the center of London is; northwards there's the Park, in other words a lot of tree canopies, but in London you can see tree canopies everywhere; at east there's East London, not so much of a deal; southwards you can see some buildings of Canary Warf, but you can see them even from the ground. London stands on a plain, with few hills on the north more similar to pimples then something else. If you put a bucket up down and climb on it you can have "amazing views of the London skyline."
But us, the few gardeners, what do we see? And even more, how do we feel? We feel a little bit as the animals of a zoo, when these coaches of tourists (rarely full) slide close to us. "But have been told to them to don't feed the gardeners?" we snigger nudging each other. And when I watch them passing, looking at us like they've never seen someone to work, I'm almost sorry seeing those blank eyes of who understood that have thrown away 15 pounds to see nothing. Then I get suspicious that them, back to home, will gush over the marvels of the Park In Progress Tour continuing the scam. Then I say to my team guys: "Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave."
*At the time I'm translating this post from Italian to English, the Park In Progress Tour website have been removed and the tours canceled one month earlier then planned. How could we blame them? It was clear they didn't earn enough. The first coaches were actually full, but after few days they sold out just half part of the available seats, to decrease quickly to less then 10 paying visitors each journey. I swear that at the end of May I saw an empty coach running around the Park. But the best was the coach before the last one, where a tourist wore the white helmet inside it. You gave it to me, and I wear it.
** The sentence "They can't distinguish an herbaceous from a weed" sounds much better in Italian, were the the words herbaceous and weed are quite similar (erbacea/erbaccia). In Italian the sentence was "(Loro) Non riescono a distinguere un'erbacea da un'erbaccia".
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