A Civil Servant's Diary of an Apocalypse

Introduction

Introduction by the Official Archivist of the Prefelicity, Dr. Pale Manilla Envelope.

Date: 25th Janice, 5011, Post Legacy.

What do we really know about our ancestors, those known to us as the Official Stakeholders - the wizards of the Dark Arts of Middle Management who ruled the Earth before the moments of the Great Felicity? What were these tribal elders like, with their red cylinder-tubes of brown bubbly liquid and their sandwiches of unidentifiable meat with the strange cheese-like substance that has stayed flexible, in many cases, for over 5,000 years?

Most of all, what was the mysterious object or state of being that the Official Stakeholders were so in thrall to; in short, what was the Olympic Legacy?

Until recently, very little was certain, but all of that changed in 5008, when a thin veneer of detritus which represents the events of the Great Felicity itself was discovered.

At the top of the four-finger thick layer of charred remains that make up the Horizon of Felicity, the line under which the Official Stakeholders themselves can be discovered, this veneer contains a strange collection of artefacts. Found among the now-famous palm-sized plastic holy relics - the ‘Dove Devotionals’ was a sheaf of papers, the partially scorched remains of a diary.

Along with some accompanying notes, the diary promises to help historians unravel the moments that led up to Felicity. In particular, the discovery may be able to shed some light upon the Olympic Legacy itself, whether it is an object, a state of grace or is somehow linked to the strange meat sandwiches and red canisters.

The following pages are drawn from this artefact. They have been painstakingly pieced together and provide a transformational shift of insight into the period that led directly to the Felicity. Our work continues, going forward; some tracts of time are missing but the Olympic Legacy, which the Official Stakeholders channelled so much of their ring-fenced resources creating, has yet to be found.

It is my hope that historians of the future find something in these pages which illuminates their studies. To use a phrase that was apparently common among our forebears, I will be ‘over the moon on a stick’ if they do. That said, I do not know what a ‘moon’ is, much less deduce why one should be over it in order to be pleasantly surprised or feel a general uplift in the quantity of distributed gaiety.

Before the Games

Diary entry 12th Jan 2011

Part of my remit as Deputy Lead Liaison Officer (Strategy and Outreach Legacy Benchmarking) for the London Games is to actualise a written account of the experience of putting on the games, outlining the key aspects of strategic methodology and thought leadership required to promote a result-focus at the organisational interface. At the core of this account is our commitment to action benchmark Legacy deliverables and derivative sustainability and embed them into the games envelope.

That said, Official Stakeholders will be encouraged, via the inclusivity regime, to develop their human capital in pursuit of the larger commercial envelope and to deploy their own outreach resources to measure their aspirations against the Legacy benchmark.

Diary addendum Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations

As part of the double bank holiday festivities to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, some of us were invited to the Palace yesterday to the concert held in HM’s honour. Unfortunately, it did not all go as planned.

In what can only be described as “mysterious circumstances” the Queen guitarist Brian May, who was reprising his role with his guitar solo version of the National Anthem on the palace roof, was unexpectedly consumed by what was believed to be some kind of amazing pyrotechnic effect.

From where I was standing, as May came to the end of the second verse and prepared to segue into Rule Britannia, he appeared to be trapped in an incandescent vortex. A swirling column of white light then quickly turned to bright green smoke and the guitar stopped abruptly.

At the end of the three seconds of silence that followed, the vortex suddenly disappeared and there was only the amplified sound of a plectrum and a tremolo arm falling onto the palace roof where May had stood.

The guitarist had disappeared, for which he received a bemused round of applause from the Royal Box, where specialists in emergency etiquette and Royal protocol spent the next thirty minutes improvising a ceremony with the tremolo arm, in order that Her Majesty would not be officially dismayed. All attempts to find the guitarist have so far failed, though a lingering scent of hairspray was detected in the Royal Standard when it was lowered later as Her Majesty left for other Jubilee duties.

Diary entry

This morning, in my role as Deputy Lead Liason Officer (Strategy and Outreach Legacy Benchmarking) for the London Games, I attended a meeting of other Games officials so that we could focus on some of the step changes in our Strategy for the Olympic Legacy that have been necessitated by environmental concerns; vis-a-vis a number of instances of extra-planetary peril.

The International Olympics Committee, in particular, have expressed concerns that our original bid document does not contain any contingency measures that might be needed in the event of an alien invasion, a disruption in the fabric of the Solar System or the appearance of the Dark One™.

A Quality Action Team (QAT) has been assembled, drawing on the expertise of Games officials with experience in risk assessment and health and safety, to evaluate and appraise the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats inherent in the circumstances presented to us by the appearance of the following:

1. Wholesale paranormal activity;
2. The proximity of a Type 7 Brown Dwarf Star;
3. Radio transmissions from a non-indigenous fleet of nearby spaceships and;
4. The Dark One™, to name but a few.

Resolutions were tabled - and passed - to verify the nature of the Brown Dwarf star and, where feasible, work towards a safety certificate compliance process whereby it may be awarded the appropriate British Standards Kitemark.

As part of my remit in Strategy and Outreach Benchmarking, my assignment is to onboard external partners; all future communications with outreach targets will be actioned by my team at the appropriate decision latitude.

The Dark One™ is a different - and difficult - matter, however, and for those reasons the QAT has formed a sub-committee with the remit of bringing Him/Her and/or It on board with an offer of Tier 1 Sponsorship and full-colour advertising space in the official programme. A PDF of terms and conditions of sponsorship have been forwarded to the Entity and it is hoped that some synergy between the Games and Him/Her and/or It can be leveraged

Final Preparations

Diary entry • Spring 2012

I am deeply fearful that events seem to be spiralling out of control with all this apocalypse business and, worried also about the impact of those events upon the Olympic Legacy, I decided to Google it.

According to the Department of Social Scrutiny and the Apocalypse there are seven signs that the world may be about to end. Their professional eschatologists believe that the seven portents of ultimate doom - omens that signify that the End of Days is upon us - are:

1. The World of Furniture Sale comes to an end and the true, horrifying price of sofas and occasional tables is revealed for the first time;
2. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs decline a self-assessment payment on account for the tax year 2012-2013;
3. The Gas Safety Inspectorate issue a certificate for the fires of eternal damnation;
4. The radius of Simon Cowell’s ego becomes so large, his X-Factor star dressing room spontaneously collapses to form a black hole;
5. No traffic cones are visible on the M25;
6. Cannibalism becomes fashionable. Heston Blumenthal flambés a stockbroker with the aid of a Eurofighter engine and Delia microwaves a dozen professional golfers in the Large Hadron Collider;
7. Barn Owls learn how to do quadratic equations.

Memorandum

To all staff.

Central Government, along with the executive agency for promoting active lifestyles among the young and feckless, SportYeah?, has outlined its determination, in the difficult weeks ahead, to press on with the delivery of both the Olympic Games and the Olympic Legacy, irrespective of the consensus of Code Brown hysteria that surrounds the coming global apocalypse.

For six weeks, the eyes of the world will be on London and Britain but also, unfortunately, on a planet-sized rock, which is engulfed in flames, in the sky.

So, we will shortly be unveiling a series of inspiring television advertisements which will attempt to draw a line under the whole armageddon business.

The advertisements will feature a marathon runner bearing a torch and some pre-packed bacon, negotiating a series of obstacles placed in his path; he leaps over a burning riot barricade, narrowly escapes the crumbling facade of a famous bank as well as Big Ben toppling into the Thames and a Bingo Hall exploding, survives a hail of javelins and finally comes home to the family kitchen victorious and able to light the eye-level grill of his cooker with the Olympic torch. The advertisement ends with the strap-line ‘2012 - Saving Our Bacon’.

There has been some criticism of the advert and the Advertising Standards Authority has insisted, in the interests of truthfulness, that the entire family, kitchen and eye-level grill be immediately vaporised and that the caption ‘Eat Bacon Sandwiches Responsibly’ be added.

Memo to members of the International Olympic Committee

News has come to us, through the usual channels, that a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, “Dressage”, has been created by the 2012 Apocalypse Committee to compete in the event that bears his name.

Until recently, it was unclear which nation’s flag he would compete under as difficult conditions in the sky dictate that there are presently UN Sanctions in force against both Niburu and Hades which are, respectively, his home address and his place of work, but the Government have seen fit to modify their methodology and make him a British subject, while awarding him an MBE for good measure and fast-track an application to make him Harbinger Laureate in the process.

With many of the formalities out of the way, Dressage still faces a drugs test as suspicions about anabolic steroids have arisen, mostly on account of the fact that he is over 12 feet tall and occasionally appears as if he is gently smouldering at the end of a round. His explanation - that he is “made of wrath, fury and choleric ill-will to all puny human life” - has now understood to have been taken aboard by the surviving members of the official Olympic Misuse of Drugs Committee who, at the end of the day, were hitherto unable to operationalise the request proactively.