Can it really have been four years already since the last Olympic games is the question I find myself asking frequently these days. You'll forgive me if I come over all nostalgic. I'm like a woman remembering the first flushes of being in love and watch the Athens 2004 Olympic ceremony as if it were my wedding video, with tears in my eyes, remembering how I felt at each moment. I begin to wonder, where will my life be by the time of the next Olympics if it's changed beyond recognition since the last one? Will I be an aunt? Will I be a mother? What will I look like? What will I be doing?

Life is all connected by a chain of events. My parents were both top athletes in their youth and used to take part regularly in athletic competitions. As a result of this, they worshipped the Olympics and watched it with great enthusiasm. Because of their ritual of watching the Olympics, all four of their highly unathletic, totally disinterested in sports offspring also marked the Olympics as landmark occasions. It was the only athletic event I watched with such dedication and the only one I ever wanted to go to.

Therefore, it follows that my parents are to blame for their own subsequent horror when I upped and left to live in Athens. If they had not been sporty, they would not have watched the Olympics and neither would their children. I would have not cultivated a lifelong desire to go to the Olympics and I would never have come to Athens.

The moral of the story is that if you want to keep your children close by, be a couch potato.