There was a poignant undercurrent in Glasgow this morning at the opening ceremony of the 20th Commonwealth Games.
If the September 18 independence referendum is carried, Scotland will no longer be included in Team GB for the Olympics, and will no longer be funded by the National Lottery.
As champion cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, one of Scotland’s favourite sons, predicted in May last year, it will take a long time for Scotland to reestablish itself on its own.
All that’s in store, this morning the opening ceremoney took a slow pace until singing legend Rod Stewart and Susan Boyle, winner of “Britain Has Talent” in 2009 took to the stage, still singing like a thrush.
Another Scottish legend, comedian Billy Connolly, was serious when he saluted Nelson Mandela. and right through the ceremony UNICEF ambassadors popped up with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, hurdler Colin Jackson, and Sir Chris.
The theme was “Children First”, with all ambassadors making a plea to the 1.5 billion television viewers to donate. and stop 18,000 kids suffering from curable diseases in Commonwealth countries dying a day.
It was a solid sell, and hopefully the Commonwealth responded.
The march past of athletes was in region order and not the usual alphabetical list of the 71 countues competing this time.
Asia led off, followed by Oceania led by Australia with champion cyclist Anna Meares the flag-bearer, while New Zealand’s bearer was the legendary shot putter Valeie Evans.
The best story out of Oceania was Niue, a tiny island 2500 kilometres north-east of New Zeland with a total population of 1611 – 11 of them are competing in Glasgow.
The best story out of the Americas came from St Helena, with its oldest inhabitant a 182 year-old giant tortoise Jonathan, celebrated by being on the reverse side of their five cent coin.
On the other side, it must have been tough going for the president of the Commonwealth Games Federation Sir Imran from Malaysia following the air crash that claimed 298 lives just over a week ago.
The Malaysian team wore black armbands in their march past, and a minute’s silence was observed before the Queen officialy opened the Games.
But the lead-in to that was a lighter moment, when Sir Imran and Sir Chris couldn’t open the Queen’s baton that held a message from the Queen inserted in the stem when the baton left Buckingham Palace 288 days ago, and travelled the width and breadth of the Commonwealth for over 100,000 miles and held aloft by 10,000 volunteers
After what seemed an eternity, they eventually extracted the message and handed it to a bemused Queen.
So four hours after it all began, the Queen officially declared the Games open.
Let the Games begin.
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