Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 - our experience

Action at the closing ceremony

Its over! Last night, 8th August was the closing ceremony for the Birmingham hosting of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Jackie and I were part of it, as we were for the opening ceremony on 28th July and what an experience it has been! It has been fun and laughter all the way through, from the first, slightly anxious audition at Edgbaston Cricket Ground to the climax last night of seeing local band Black Sabbath with Ozzie Ozbourne perform in front of a sell out Alexander Stadium in Perry Bar, Birmingham and broadcast to millions around the world.

Nathan on his stage at one of the earlier rehearsals

Rehearsing at Longbridge with our numbered bibs

It has to be said that we were not major performers, so only eagle eyed people, like my daughter, Fiona, would have picked us out. We were Marshalls, looking after the athletes whilst forming shapes, dancing and clapping along all synchronised by Nathan Wright, our Aussie Parade and Production Director prompting and encouraging us all through our in-ear communications. Long will we remember his friendly and calm instructions during the performance such as "we've got about 15 seconds before we start vogue....start vogue in three, two, one, go please" and then see 400 of us all commence at the same moment. His encouragement and praise kept us going "Oh my lovely Marshalls, you look amazing, from up here it looks absolutely fabulous, keep it going". Nathan has many years experience of large scale events and has a way of making all participants feel valued and happy and knows just how to make it work. We have enjoyed every minute of our time there even down to the auditions where he managed to put everyone at ease and get the best out of people. Whether his praise was genuine or just to make us feel good was irrelevant, it did make us feel good. I'm tempted to think that he meant it as we all did seem to gel together and things happened. His voice breaking in our ears at the last run through yesterday afternoon as he told us how much he had enjoyed working with us and how much he'll miss us was definitely genuine as he ended up not being able to speak. We'll miss his jokes too as he kept us amused whilst waiting. Here's one: why should you never trust stairs? Cause they are always up to something!

In our cast holding marquee at Longbridge waiting our call to go out

We've made a lot of friends too. To get 400 Marshalls, 72 placard bearers and often other performers all together to rehearse means we are called to rehearsals with plenty of time to spare, you can't get 500 odd people on site, check them in, hand out bibs with numbers on, hand out in ear communication devices, hand out snacks and offering free tea and coffee quickly, so we always had plenty of time waiting and that means chatting to other people. Always friendly, always happy to be there and enjoying the experience. It's a unique environment so even the times waiting were part of the special memories we'll hold.

Arriving at Alexander Stadium for the first time - this is all a bit serious now!

As these things disappear in a blur, I thought it'd be a good idea to write down our journey, partly so we'll be able to remember it and partly in case others are enthused to get involved in similar events in the future.

Trying our moves out on the field of play for the first time

Our audition in March 2022 in Edgbaston

It all started for us in June 2021 and that was down to Jackie keeping her eye on internet announcements. She'd long been thinking about us volunteering for the games, being so local to us, so she'd found the BCG website and expressed an interest. On 1st June 2021 an announcement was made that volunteering applications were now open, so we both registered our interest on their website and got a note back to say the response has been overwhelming and they will be in touch later in the summer. Just like many other volunteering jobs we've applied for we put it to the back our minds. We got occasional emails telling us how the selection process was going with information on how the games preparation was going, but it was on 20th August 2021 that we both received an email saying our application had been successful and we were invited to book an interview, which we did the next day. That was done in the library in Birmingham by other volunteers who had been selected ahead of us and was friendly and relaxed. A big group of us watched a video on a loop getting us excited about the prospect of being involved and then we were called in one by one. I really didn't want to be in charge of groups of people so I told them I'd be happy to be involved and do whatever is necessary but my days of managing other people are over. I told them about my ballroom dancing background and the kind of things I liked doing, boxes were ticked, we got really enthusiastic and then waited. We were told we wouldn't hear anything until March or April 2022, five to six months away.

Nathan (in the red suit) and the other choreographers at the auditions making us feel relaxed

We still got the odd email telling us how preparations were going, but the one we received on 13th January was the most interesting, "Be part of history" it said "applications open today for volunteers to join the cast of the opening and closing ceremonies" and at the bottom was a big "Apply Now" button. Up to that point we'd assumed that volunteering for the opening and closing ceremonies was automatic and part of the general volunteering, but apparently not, so we applied, that being the thing we were most interested in. I can't just remember what questions were asked on the application form now, but we obviously did OK as, on 20th February we both had an email telling us we'd been selected to attend an audition with our 'world-class creative team' and to log on to the ceremonies portal to book our auditions. This is suddenly sounding quite scary. An audition! Never been to one of those before! "Click here to book your audition" Lets go for it, what could possibly go wrong? 8th March we booked, at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, 13:30 to 16:30 - no going back now! 

Leave your inhibitions at the door in the auditions, it doesn't matter who's looking

These are the people that matter and are watching

Like everything to do with these games (in our experience), it was very well organised, volunteers to guide us into parking, volunteers to check us in, volunteers to measure us for costumes: hand size, head size, arm length, everything. "have you got pierced ears?" Er, no, but why? Photos taken and then "please take a seat in one of those chairs arranged on the floor". How scary is this? Nathan was there putting us at ease as was Perry, a man in a bull costume posing with people for photos, but a number of other more serious looking people eyeing everyone and making notes. Time to lose those inhibitions and just let yourself go, so we did bits of group acting, imagine you're walking a tightrope, imagine you're pulling a heavy cart through mud, make circles with your arms, stuff like that. We were shown a routine and then another one - our brains were full, but we were being watched, was there a turn there, should I clap now? Oh, got that wrong - and they are still watching. There's lots of young wannabes there and they all look good as there are older people. As Mr. and Mrs average will we really be selected? The final assignment was to dance in your own way across the floor in front of everyone, you have about 30 seconds to think about it. Some people did cartwheels, gymnastics, it all looked good. What shall I do? Jackie was in front of me and said she'd hang back a bit and after I do a bit on my own lets get together and do a bit of ballroom. OK. That seemed to go well we got a cheer, but what will those silent, serious people think?

This was our first sight of the bull at the stadium on our first rehearsal there. We were allowed to take photos, but forbidden to post on social media. Anyone doing so would be 'followed up'. They didn't want anyone spoiling the surprise

Our Peaky Blinders costumes

The email next day thanked us for attending and said they'd be in touch in April. They had also said that we can't be a general volunteer and be a performer as rehearsals would overlap volunteering work so, when on 1st April I had an offer to be a general volunteer I was in a quandry. Should I take that and then not be able to be a performer, or turn it down in the hope I'd be selected as a performer? I turned down the general volunteering and hoped. Then on 19th April we both had our emails confirming we'd been selected to be a volunteer performer. We'll be performing at the Alexander Stadium in front of 30,000 spectators and a global TV audience of up to a billion. There's nothing like starting small then! We accepted and were told they'd be in touch in Mid May with everything we'd need to know for our first rehearsal. We had to apply for ID and accreditation which required the Home Office doing background checks on all performers and then we had our rehearsal schedule emailed through from Josh, the Casting Coordinator. Saturday 11th June on the site of the old Rover car factory at Longbridge. The factory has long since been demolished and its now a big outdoor expanse. They had taken it over, tarmaced the surface and erected lots of huge marquees round the edge where various smaller rehearsals, cast holding and check in would take place. An observation room erected high on scaffold overlooked the marked out plan of the Alexander Stadium allowed senior people to get a view of the overall shape of us as a group and make changes they thought would look better, so our rehearsals were all outdoors and open to the elements. Fortunately the weather was reasonable, sometimes quite cold so we were wrapped up, sometimes a bit wet, so we had waterproofs on and sometimes it was hot, so we needed sun cream, but always it was fun and we wore smiles. Nathan was always there, cracking jokes, making us laugh and always encouraging us along. 

Lining up outside on one of the rehearsals ready to go on. Now it was getting excited as spectators were watching for the first time

We made progress through our five rehearsals at the Longbridge site and they got us working as a huge team. Then we moved to the Alexander Stadium for rehearsals, firstly in amongst the workmen finishing off and then in the finished article. We had another five rehearsals there and, as soon as they started it just felt more serious, still fun and Nathan was still encouraging us along, but we could tell how much this meant to him too and we all wanted to do well for him as well as ourselves. Jackie's written about the run up to and the opening ceremony in a previous blog post so I won't go into that any more other than to say it went well but actually still felt like another rehearsal rather than the real thing. Perhaps thats because we knew rehearsals would be carrying on straight after for the closing ceremony.

With Linda (a friend of friends - and now a friend of ours) on a walk round the fabulous stadium

The opening ceremony was on Thursday 28th July, we went home straight after rather than going to the aftershow party in central Birmingham (too difficult to have to move the car and find somewhere else to park in the city centre) and then on Saturday we started again back at the Longbridge site. It was like coming home, all very familiar and, by now we had settled into a nice routine. Arrive, get our bibs with our numbers on (119 for me, 117 for Jackie - they were given out on our first day and Marcia got to the desk just before me to get 118, so she was always in between us), a communication device and a snack, then across to the cast waiting marquee to get a tea or coffee and catch up with the usual crowd (impossible to know everyone, so smallish groups were made, usually around similar numbers). I only bumped into Pete, a member of our SMC mountaineering club at the final dress rehearsal, he was a Marshall too and had been at every rehearsal, but we hadn't seen each other.

Forming our lovely shapes on opening night. We're there, but only we know which one's we are

The fabulous bull  on opening night

There was a definite feeling that the end is now looming as we only had four rehearsals at Longbridge and then we were straight into the closing ceremony. It has to be said that our roles were relatively limited for the closing ceremony, there were athletes attending, about 3500 of them and we had to get then into designated areas on the field of play and prevent them from moving outside their areas by corralling them and then dancing, waving arms, clapping and trying to interact with them. Our moves were therefore relatively easy, but still we had to learn to move to certain areas at certain times and Nathan, as usual, was keen for us all to move together and dance in synchronisation to make it look as smart as possible. Getting 3500 athletes into position in 3.5 minutes was always going to be a tall order so they had to make changes to our moves at almost every rehearsal once they saw how it looked from their observation room high on top of the scaffold. It didn't help that they'd made changes to our rehearsal schedules at the last minute, changing a Monday night rehearsal to a Saturday morning instead and a Sunday morning to a Sunday afternoon. We had to change plans to make those, but others were unable to change their plans, meaning half the cast were missing from at least two out of four rehearsals. They had their reasons for changing them and it was probably as the main stage dancers had much more complex routines to learn and they needed rehearsal times more than us. Although we were all quite relaxed about it we sensed Nathan was getting quite stressed, particularly on the day his microphone kept cutting out so we couldn't hear his instructions, testing him to the limit. He didn't swear, but he almost did!

Back at Longbridge for closing ceremony rehearsals and a whole new stage and routine

Our reharsal on Friday last at Longbridge had an exciting but sad feel about it. No more will be coming to our familiar Longbridge site, only one more meeting will we have at the actual closing ceremony and then it would all be over. It was a cold night at Longbridge as we finished around 9:30pm feeling a bit under rehearsed. We were considering taking an extra layer for the closing ceremony, but in the event it wasn't needed, the wind changed and the temperature was back up into the high 20C, still being 21C at 11:00pm at night. We'll be hot then!

And sneak previews of some of the other acts

Arrival time at the Alexander Stadium was requested at 1:00pm. Getting a total cast of at least 1500 in and organised needed a lot of time, particularly with the tight security needed for a global event with royalty attending. No chances could be taken so airport style security was employed and all bags scanned. We collected Fiona (not my daughter, but a friend living rounnd the corenr in Alvechurch and another Marshall) and headed off to our reserved driveway parking in Dyas Avenue about a mile from the stadium. We'd booked the same driveway for every rehearsal at the stadium as we were worried about the threatened rail strikes so took no chances. It's a curious parking spot on what is, otherwise a nice street, being situated behing a lamppost and a street sign. We thought it couldn't be right when we first saw it, but a bit of angled reversing in and it worked. It was certainly convenient being about a 20 minute walk away so we had no complaints.  

Back at the Alexander Stadium and there's the stage we last saw at Longbridge on Friday. It was dismantled after our rehearsal there on Friday, shipped to the stadium and after the last competitions finished on Sunday night was re-erected and ready by 4:00pm on Monday - nice work!

The classic cars waiting for their call to go on

Time passed quite quickly in the very hot huge building in the grounds of the stadium that had been converted to our cast holding area, with curtains diving the various performing groups. It seemed quite familiar back in here again, this being our seventh visit here so we settled down to chatting, drinking tea, walking round and watching things progress. Security seemed even tighter now and we were prevented from leaving all but a small area surrounding our building and not allowed in any part of the stadium. Nathan had got us a short time slot allocated on the field of play at 4:00pm so we could go out and practise our positions and moves as this was the only time we could rehearse in the actual stadium. We only had about 20 minutes allocated to us as so many other acts had their piece to rehearse too so we could hear the tension in Nathan's oh so friendly voice that we needed to get all this cracked and in our heads as quickly as possible. Don't worry, he assured us, when you come out just listen to me and I'll be guiding you in every move. He then reminded us this would be the last time he'd be able to speak to us before the ceremony and wanted to tell us how much he'd enjoyed working with us and how he was going to miss us. We could feel his emotion and hear his voice cracking up. He's such an emotional guy!

With Marcia preparing to go on for our 4:00pm final run through

Final positions at 4:00pm

We've got this, so back to our holding area, we picked up our lunch packs of sandwich, crisps and a piece of fruit, had another cup of tea, chatted and walked round outside in the cooler air as much as possible. One of the staff came in, stood on a chair and announced we could take our costumes home, all of them, don't leave anything behind he said. That's nice, we both really like our costumes and I've always wanted a flat cap. Bits we can wear again, perhaps not all at once, unless we're going to a Peaky Blinders party. 6:15pm they'd told us to start putting our costumes on so gradually men and women alike all started undressing in full view of everyone else and getting their costumes on. Such is the community 'all in it together' attitude no one turned a hair to this, we all just got on with it. Changing rooms were available but it was all too much trouble, no one was looking anyway. Once dressed we headed outside again to see the athletes arriving, clapping and high fiving them as they went by. What a great atmosphere it was! At 7:15 we were asked to all go back inside to wait our call, we did, but many stayed outside and we could hear the claps and cheers as team England arrived. Soon Josh our Casting coordinator came in with a sign for VOM2 to form a line and head out. We're VOM1 so not us yet. Off they went and suddenly there's much fewer of us and we're getting excited. VOM1 please line up Josh shouted holding up his sign. That'll be us, off we go. We're outside in the late afternoon warm sunshine assembling up in our lines for the last time, excited but sad. Once we're lined up Josh looks us over and leads us down to the stadium entrance where we can see the pre-show entertainment going on and what looks to be a very full stadium.

Applauding the athletes as they arrive

With Heather (120) and Marcia (118) ready to go on

9 minutes to show start the screen says and spectators are looking over taking photos. We're smiling and waving back, taking photos of them and we're clapping all the other actors coming past us to go out, it's really exciting. As the first acts go out we move round to the front of the entrance so we can see out and watch the others head out and start the ceremony. We wait for the second half of 'Come On Eileen' our man at the front raises his hand, Nathan comes over our headsets and says "come on Marshalls, show then what you can do and, above all have the time of your lives. This is it, this is what memories are made of, good luck" and with that, we're on, waving hands and doing just what he's telling us, having the time of our lives. "odds to evens in three, two, one, go please" "athlete position in three, two, one, go please". Good job we know what all this means! We had a great night, the music and the show was amazing, the atmosphere amazing, we really did have the time of our lives, memories truly are made of this. Black Sabbath as the climax may, for many people, not be the ideal but for Jackie and myself they were amazing. I first saw them in concert in April 1971 when I was 15 years old, and here I was, 51 years later, dancing away with as much gusto as I did all those years ago. Who cares what people think, We're living this and we're drinking it in - fabulous!

Lining up at VOM1 ready to go on. It looks a packed stadium!

It's a quiet day today but we're still buzzing. Will we see any of those lovely people again? Don't know, someone took our contact details and said they'd set up a WhatsApp group and perhaps try and meet up again, Jackie has expressed an interest in the next Commonwealth games in Victoria, Australia in 2026 and, of course, in two years time the Olympics will be in Paris. Who knows if and when we'll next get a calling. Fun it has been, addictive? Maybe! At about 120 hours of rehearsals, travelling to and from and performances it is quite a commitment.

The show has started, the first act is on and we're waiting for our signal to enter

The show is on and we're in our 'athlete position'

My daughter managed to get this photo from her TV. Fame at last!

And she got this one too of Jackies back. I don't think anyone will be asking for our autographs!

So that's it, it's all over, but not in our memories!