Clearly, we have fallen through some wormhole in space and landed in an alternative reality. That can be the only explanation for Great Britain being third in the medals table ahead of Australia and Russia. I remember when I was a child we would be lucky to win one or maybe two gold medals at the olympics and here we are with twelve and we're not even finished yet!

I'm not a big sports fan, but I have found this olympics is more and more grabbing my attention. Not just for the fantastic results of the Brits, but for sights such as Usain Bolt 'jogging' to victory in his semi-final of the 100m.

It really is great to see that, despite the media claiming we're a country full of fat children, we have a large pool of world class sporting talent. Of course, the reality is that we've always had this, it's just that until about ten years ago you'd have found that British team members would have been training whilst holding down a full time job. Thanks to the national lottery we can now provide funding to talented athletes without calling on the government to do it.

Despite the great results I doubt we'll ever do better than we did in 1908. It's quite amusing to see how things have changed. The games were being held in the UK and we fielded about a third of all competitors (some events only had Brits participating). The events have also changed a bit; now we have BMX biking and the triathlon (oh, and synchronised swimming which really does stretch the meaning of sport). Back in 1908 we had figure skating, polo and, get this, tug of war.

I wonder what the ancient Greeks would have thought.

The other day a friend of ours stopped by for dinner. Since he was passing through (indirectly) on his way back to Australia he didn't want too much luggage and so decided to leave us a book he'd just read.

Back in 1989 I was lent a book by a different friend who said, "You must read this, it's great". That was a Friday and I sat down to read it in the evening. Stopping only for sleep and some food I read the book from cover to cover in one go, all 680-odd pages of it. What book was this? It was The Eight by Katherine Neville. A mystery revolving around the game of chess it soon became one of my favorite books of all time. The author has written a couple of books since them but none of them (in my opinion) lived up to her first book.

Imagine my surprise the other evening when I'm handed a book by my friend called The Fire, written by Katherine Neville and a sequel to The Eight. To make things even better it's a pre-publication copy and it won't be available generally until the middle of October.

My first thought was to sit down tonight and re-read The Eight from cover to cover and then start on The Fire. Nineteen years later things are a bit different and I suspect that my two year old son is not going to be too amenable to letting Daddy sit around and read a book all weekend. Still, it'll be great to see if the original is still the way I remember it (it's been a few years since I last read it) and how good the sequel is.