I don’t have a video recording of this, but I think the thrust of the performance is pretty well burned into my consciousness, so I’d like to ask a few questions while the cinders smoulder.

Why was the sea a rippling mass of men? Why were the sailors wearing leather shimmy-shirts and leggings and not much else? Why did we have to see simulated dying in something that was so completely dissimulated in every other way? Why was the founding of Barcelona so death-defyingly noisy? Or rather, why did the 1992 Barcelona bigwigs choose to commemorate a bloody battle, mythic though it may be, rather than the more amazing but less Disneyfied highlights of discovery. (Surely there were some?)

Apparently I missed the last flamingos, but I guess that this was the bewdy bit before the boys came on to ripple their thighs and jut their jaws in a parodic gung-ho spectacle that was more embarrassing than an American election campaign.

Throughout, our faithful Australian commentator intoned his lines, not daring to vary what had been scripted for him with a single aside, a meagre comment of his own. It was just like watching a 1960s Christmas pageant.

When the awestruck commentator ended up with some nonsense about how the burly blokes came ashore with their ‘wisdom and their spears’, surely this rather crass joke deserved a snigger. Where do you keep your wisdom, Herc? Here, hold my spear. Ah, what a sophisticated society we are!

People sat through this? People sat in that stadium and were entertained? May as well flood the grass and send out a few of the unemployed to battle for the chance to win a video player. I guess they were amused, but I’d like to think that some were rolling around beneath their little wooden benches in mirth – or horror. It’s not everyday you get to see grown men play so seriously as being the subjects of their own mythological yearnings. Except at sporting events.

It was vulgar, ugly, silly and expensive. It was probably, therefore, exactly what was required. It’s the old dollar factor at work again, the one that equates expenditure with worth. The spectacle of the Olympic games has become as hollow as that Herc they wheeled out to fire the aspirations of Spanish men. The whole event still parades as a moral exemplar, where traditional values are displayed, upheld, fought for, honoured. As synthetic as the waves, and as fake as the blood on the Spanish warriors, this morality façade to justify and condone the rapaciousness that is its true ideal. Glory rather than endeavour. Success rather than striving. And profit rather than sharing. That’s what it stands for. And no plastic monster unfolding its wobbly legs over the Barcelona stadium can disguise the fact that the idea is to con the rest of the world rather than delight it with the remarkable sight (not spectacle) of human beings gathered together to enjoy the beauty of human endeavour.

Sorry! My figures were in a fuddle last month. Lit Board mag funding has been increased by 1% and not from 1%; the end result remains 8.5%.