However, I have to report that table tennis - a quixotic selection in case none of my main choices succeeded - is not a great spectator sport. In a 45-minute match, you get about seven minutes of actual play. The rest is taken up by retrieving the ball at the end of each point followed by a round of ritualised table wiping and body posturing before the next service. An average rally lasts about two seconds, an exciting one about five.
Never mind. We will surely have 60 medals before that flame is put out on Sunday. Feelgood floweth over. But one thing is riling me: Lloyds TSB's sponsorship of the Games. It's not a top level sponsor like McDonald's and Visa. It's merely the "bank partner of the London Organising Committee". Even so, it is to me clearly inappropriate for a bank supported by the taxpayer, and which provides such lamentable service, to be paying to join its brand with the Olympics. I hope it has proved a better partner for Locog than it has for me.
As well as being a journalist, I have a small business, which banks with Lloyds. Lloyds' basic account technology - which has always been a bit ropey - has recently taken a surreal turn. A month ago, when I logged in to check my account, there was no statement, just the advice: "Sorry but this account information isn't available right now. Please try again later." I could pay bills. I could search my statement. I could see my balance. But I could neither see nor download my actual statement.
I had encountered this before and was not at first unduly concerned. However, when I was still getting the same message a week later I picked up the phone. Lloyds now explained that there are too many transactions passing through my account. I was mystified. There are no more transactions than the previous month or the one before.
The problem might be solved, it was suggested, if I increased my statement frequency. Their system copes better if it has less to remember, they said. I said, Fine, let's end paper statements altogether, like you asked me to a year or more ago. "Oh, no," came the reply, "that's not a good idea… then it has to remember everything". So we didn't go to never, but we still did not get a result.
Well, it's now a month since this nonsense began, and I still have not seen my statement. When I last asked about the problem, it emerged that it is a known software issue affecting "corporate accounts with too many transactions". And, "Sorry, I am unaware of any target date for resolving this problem. And no, it is not affecting many customers… only those with a lot of transactions."
Excuse me, Lloyds, but is this not a little bit absurd? On two counts. Firstly, my business only has 10 transactions a day. Secondly, is it not preposterous for a bank computer system to be unable to deal with all the transactions its customers need to make?
Yet "too many transactions" is the only explanation that has been put forward to me when I called as a customer. I also approached Lloyds Group PR department. They affected to be unaware of the problem.
Well, they might be unaware. But I sure am. Is this truly not affecting "many other customers"? Lloyds has a million small business accounts. I cannot believe that all of those with 10 transactions a day have been unable to see their statements for a month. But I can't see any other interpretation of what I have been told. If anyone else has come across this problem, I'd be pleased to hear from them.
