Mmmm, yes, Shopping Bag is tiring a little of the "O" word, too. O for Olympics, O for Overkill (already), O for Oops we bid for it and now we REALLY have to host it. Etc... That's the nasty bit of Shopping Bag speaking. The nice bit - admittedly that makes up less than 50 per cent, but still, it has a big mouth - says hooray! Let's get into the spirit of it.
So! Nice SB says let's get into the spirit of it in a non-sweaty no-need-for-stopwatch kind of way, and take a trip to the V&A web shop where there's a sneaky preview of the "Century of Olympic Posters" exhibition which is soon to come to the V&A Museum of Childhood. Honestly, they're pretty brilliant, despite my sporting ambivalence.
Some of them are even a bit racy (not a pun): have a look at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics poster, which
was banned in some countries because the nudity was deemed "daring". The 1948 St Moritz illustration, on the other hand, is almost intolerably chic, which is equally pleasing.
And even though the exhibition doesn't open until 17th May, pre-ordering is already up and running (not a pun) so you can browse through at your leisure, or on a Blackberry while you're limbering up to throw the javelin or leap a long distance.
There's no getting away from the fact that despite some impending Olympic doom, the advertisements for historical events made the whole thing look fun. Which goes to show, we may be the architects of our own destruction, but for the love of God, we can create pretty artifacts to document the process.
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