The Olympic Flame is on its way - and so am I ...

The Olympic Flame is on its way to Marseilles from Piraeus. It should arrive there tomorrow, May 8th.

Panathenaic Stadium

This short article, https://www.euronews.com/2024/04/27/olympic-flame-sets-sail-from-greece-to-france, translated from (possibly) French, is full of distracting ads and 'further reading', but it gives the main facts and has a fine photo of the Belem, the three-masted sailing ship that is carrying the flame to France after its odyssey through Greece. It's a two minute read and also has a photo of the handover of the torch by the Head of Greece's Olympic Committee to the President of Paris 2024 in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens. 

And that's where The Boy in Two Minds begins, in both the ancient and the modern stories.

For Suzanne, in the modern story, the stadium looks like in the photo above. But for Themistokles, in the ancient story in 432 BCE, this was just a small valley. A road ran up it from the lower end (farthest away in the photo) where there was a bridge over the River Illisos, which flowed from right to left. Nowadays there's a six-lane city street built over where the river once ran. In the Prologue of The Boy in Two Minds the action switches from then till now and back again ...

This duality gave rise to the marketing idea of pairing up modern photos of places that appear in the books, each captioned with a quote, usually from the ancient story. Sometimes quite a lot of imagination may be necessary to 'see' in the photo what's going on in the quote ...

Example 1

    photo taken 2012, Panathenaic Stadium

    432 BCE

   Looking along the bridge, Themis saw Straton and his two elder brothers walking towards him.

   Efsevios leaned towards Themis' ear. 'Drawing insulting pictures can get you into a lot of trouble,' he whispered.

   'Only if they lie,' said Themis with a grin, stepping back.

   'Don't go out alone,' threatened Straton as they turned away.

Example 2

  photo taken 2024, possible remains of the Painted Arcade in the Ancient Agora/Market place

    432 BCE

   Phidias took [Panainos'] arm and they walked down the steps to the roadway. 'It would be helpful to know when you think you can come to Elis and help me finish off the Zeus at Olympia,' [he said].

   'So Olympia is a place,' thought Themis, 'not a god. But it seems Zeus is there.'

My thanks to Brian for this idea and the 'bridge' photo above, and to Michelle and Ralph of The Book Dragon for their input. A new venture for me...

Please let me know, dear readers, what you think. The photos and quotes will appear on Twitter/X, my 'J M Newsome, author' FaceBook page, LinkedIn (Julia M Newsome), and anywhere else I can manage at regular intervals this summer. The hashtag for The Boy in Two Minds is #AncientOlympicBoy. 

See you on the Web ...

All photographs © Julia M Newsome unless otherwise credited.

Olympic impressions, vol 4

'Golden Flower'

In May, the London 2012 Olympic Flame was lit in Ancient Olympia, at an altar in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera, the oldest surviving temple on the site.

A few weeks later, I visited the same place.












And, when I got home, I watched the flame that had been lit there, being carried through my local towns, usually in the rain!











Finally, on August 3rd, I saw it as the flaming petals of the cauldron in the shape of a chrysanthemum, in the Olympic Stadium, burning day ...                      ... and night.

There was no similar specific symbol at the Ancient Olympic Games. There were flames alight on dozens of altars and in the temples most of the year, so flames were all around all the time.

But it cheers me that the word 'chrysanthemum' in Greek means 'Golden Flower', and that that is the shape Thomas Heatherwick and colleagues chose for our 30th modern Olympiad's flaming cauldron.




(The first two pictures above appear on
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/05/lighting-the-2012-olympic-flame/100294/
with many others. Beautiful!)

Olympic Games, here I come!

Today I'm travelling down to London for the Olympics. I'm going by car, not by ship, like Themis in The Boy with Two Heads. And it will only take six hours, not six days. 


We have tickets for three events: beach volleyball on Monday ("the hottest tickets in town"), athletics on Friday evening, and trampoline on Saturday (these must be warm tickets, at least!). We decided against boxing, in spite of its relevance to my story. The weather looks dryer there ...

Horse Guards beach volleyball venue

Since I last blogged, Connie has overcome the technical difficulties and up-loaded the e-book of The Boy with Two Heads to Amazon. She decided the price would be £3.99, with a 'free day' sometime soon, when readers will be able to download it for free. I'll blog the date when I know.


Meanwhile, I've been writing the first draft of a new reader manuscript, probably for Cambridge. 

Which is why I haven't been focussed much on my Boy! But he's been selling gently all along, and I did take two days off to go down to London two weeks ago to go round the bookshops near the Olympic Park and in Central London to raise awareness of him. I wore my promotional T-shirt. I hope to have more to say about that when I've had a chance to see if there have been any results. Waterstones' website says he is available to order. Blackwell says he is 'not in stock - our special ordering service will try to obtain this title for you'. At least, they've stopped saying he's only available from the USA!


So now I'm all set to enjoy the Games. We watched the Opening Ceremony on TV last night. The papers are saying it was "a Triumph". Thank you, to Danny Boyle and all the thousands who took part!  It was fascinating to be reminded of the variety of human cultures and styles as the athletes paraded into the stadium. My favourite moment (from among many funny and touching and enthralling ones) was when those 204 copper petals rose up and became a burning flower. The London 2012 'cauldron' was designed by Thomas Heatherwick, truly thinking outside the box. No bowls on sticks for him. Wow!

Robbery in Olympia

This is not the place to post an opinion on the paralysing economic problems of Greece. But sadly I am not surprised by yesterday's theft from the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games in Antiquity, which is one of three museums at the site of the ancient Games in Olympia. 

Museum of the History of the
Olympic Games in Antiquity

Cuts in staff numbers and salaries due to the austerity measures mean that these museums are more vulnerable than ever to criminals. It seems that armed thieves tied up and gagged the one female security guard, broke glass cases with hammers and grabbed sixty or so bronze and pottery artefacts, although exactly what has been stolen has not been reported yet.

All the artefacts in the museum, though, were relevant to the ancient Games and so depicted athletes, their equipment and their concerns. I was in that museum in late 2009 researching for The Boy with Two Heads and I took these photos. 

The athlete in the centre of the kylix (a drinking cup) is preparing for a long jump, holding weights to help him go further. I don't have a record of who the male statue is as he is of a later period than I was interested in for my research.

Nike, ancient Greek goddess of victory

The female statue is a modern copy of the flying Victory or Nike that stood on a 10 metre high column near the ramp up to the Temple of Zeus. The remains of the original, made by Paionios in about 421 BC, are in the larger Archaeological Museum nearby.

In May the Olympic Flame will be lit in the precinct known as the Altis, near the site of the most ancient temple still discernable (the Heraion) and about 200 yards from the museum that was raided. There’s a brief but pithy article about this on the Inside The Games website.