Guest Blogger Charlie Cochrane - Why I’m Looking Forward To 2012

As anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with me – in real life or online – knows, I’m sport mad. So 2012 will be special because the Olympics (and the Paralympics) are coming to the UK.

Every four years the Cochranes end up glued to the television, watching just about any event they can. Except for beach volleyball or Greco-Roman wrestling, neither of which really count as sports. Cycling, rowing, yachting, three-day eventing, and all the rest - bring them on! We cheer like mad for our heroes, irrespective of the fact that they can’t hear us. And also irrespective of whether they’re British or not. Whether it’s Oscar Pistorius or Usain Bolt, we cheer on our foreign favourites, too.

All internal rivalry is put on hold; perhaps I’d better explain that. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are great rivals in the sporting arena. The Cochrane household being an Anglo-Scottish one means that whenever the “Auld enemies” square up then tension runs high. You should have seen us at the Calcutta Cup (rugby international) match last year. Or maybe you shouldn’t, as it wasn’t a pretty sight. Lots of banter, a few insults and the bragging rights for the English again.

I still have nightmares thinking of 1990 and the Scots putting the tin lid on our Grand Slam ambitions. (Contact me direct if you need that translated!)

But a truce is declared for the Olympics. So what if Sir Chris Hoy is Scottish? I’ll cheer his tartan lycra (he doesn’t wear tartan lycra, that’s me fantasising) to the hilt as he ploughs his way through the Keirin. And I’ll happily forget that Dai Greene is Welsh as he soars over the hurdles. This is a British team and the Union flag, rather than the Saltire or the flag of St David will fly as they give out the medals, and I’ll be in floods of tears. Just like little Garry Herbert was in Barcelona in 1992.

Sport does that to me. I can take or leave romantic comedies or anything else which is designed to tug at my heartstrings, but give me two rugby teams lining up and singing their hearts out to their national anthems and I’m a quivering wreck. And that’s even before the game itself has started.

So, I’m laying in a big supply of tissues for July through to September, as I rejoice, despair and undergo every other emotion in the name of Olympic/Paralympic competition. Only one problem to overcome – how do we actually get ourselves to the Olympic stadium for the event we have tickets for?

My January release ia All Lessons Learned (print)

Buy link: http://store.samhainpublishing.com/lessons-learned-p-6678.html

As Charlie Cochrane couldn't be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice—like managing a rugby team—she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, predominantly historical romances/mysteries. She lives near Romsey but has yet to use that as a setting for her stories, choosing to write about Cambridge, Bath, London and the Channel Islands.

A member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and International Thriller Writers Inc, Charlie's Cambridge Fellows Series, set in Edwardian England, was instrumental in her being named Author of the Year 2009 by the review site Speak Its Name.