Stratford was delightful as always. I tried to turn left out of the station but my Skin forced an executive left into Great Eastern Road, tripling my walk time to Gabriel’s. There’s no way of knowing if I had just dodged a dirty bomb particulate cloud or if I was a tiny part of an evacuation modelling exercise, either way it was a ball ache. It was nearly 2300 by the time I got to the Village. The place was grebby as always, shuffling late night shoppers slurping down street noodles and I turned down five Clipper sellers in as many minutes. The faded, transitory glory in the Village was nearly as bad as the O2 Arena. Nearly. Eleven billion in old money buys some permanence but the hectare of previously pretty water park was now a sallow, grim bog and previously artful poly sun canopies were shredded into moth-eaten pterodactyl wings that snapped and fluttered in the harsh December wind that scooted off the Lea Valley marsh.
Gabriel’s lock up was an old storage space in what was originally the Estonian section of the athletes’ accommodation. Thirty cubic metres lined with grey, fist-pocked plasterboard was my operating theatre for the night. The roller door death rattled up on under-lubed tracks and Gabriel greeted me with his standard blanked face.