Los Angeles

Today is the inauguration ceremony for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. I wish
them all the luck in the world. They certainly need it, and a whole lot more. I’m blipping long before the
actual swearings-in take place and I hope that everything happens without incident.

I’m lucky enough to have visited the US twice. The first time was for a family holiday to New York in
1999. The second was to Los Angeles in 2015. On both occasions I met nothing but friendliness and felt welcome. I suppose you could say that New York and LA aren’t ‘typical’ US cities but as far as personal experience goes they’re all I have to judge.   I'm well aware that not everyone, resident or visitor, is nearly as fortunate as I have been.

My blip wasn’t taken today, though it was processed. It isn’t a good quality photograph as it was taken
on a now obsolete smartphone from a distance of about quarter of a mile. You’re going to have to
take my word for it that the person at the podium is the then First Lady (what a title!) Michelle Obama.
The occasion was the opening ceremony of the 2015 Special Olympics World Games and the First Lady
was addressing the athletes and supporters. She was charming. The venue was the LA Coliseum. There
were 6,500 athletes from 165 countries who were preparing to participate in 25 sports. Of these many
athletes my daughter was one. In the extra you can see the Coliseum with thousands of athletes, coaches, supporters and sports fans filling it.

I blipped about my trip to California and the World Games starting here None of the blips is great quality; partly because they are phone snaps, partly because I had very little time and partly because I was almost immobilised by jetlag and heat. But I had a truly wonderful time and wouldn’t have missed it.

So this is my tenuous connection to today’s ceremonies. I read yesterday about the baton being passed from Obama to Biden with a four year 'blip' in the middle. I think that is hopelessly naive and optimistic given the chaos and discord #45 has promulgated. But today thank goodness it isn’t four more years of him in the White House.