"Somehow, one blindly suspects, we will muddle through without major catastrophe in the usual shambolic fashion."

The less than ideal weather has led to a doom-and-gloom mood in the UK about the Olympic Games, as I can attest from the depressing BBC radio and television coverage this morning.

And while it's not a golf story, Matthew Norman's Telegraph column summing up the cranky mood toward London 2012 is a must read if you have the slightest interest in the Games or British culture. Besides, they give you a free bottle of water here when you purchase a Daily Telegraph, and even though the paper can slide by on its great coverage, I'm a sucker for free bottled water.

With so much time to prepare, one hoped that London, on Britain’s behalf, would show herself off to the rest of the world at her prettiest and most lovely. For a while and from a distance, with building projects on time and allegedly under budget, it seemed she would. But get up close and look behind all the fancy make-up (we’ll come to the London Mayor and the Proctor & Gamble beauty salon below), and London is a raddled, wrinkled, crumbly old tart.

You can plaster on all the slap in the world, but at close quarters this town is an ancient hag, with its Victorian Tube system, rickety infrastructure and main airport that cannot handle the influx. We desperately wanted to get through the Olympics with the tarted-up veneer intact, but the rains came and the mascara started to run.

The face the city will now present to visitors will not, in truth, be gorgeous.