London's finest hours

Okay, so I'm going through Olympics withdrawal. I'm jonesing for more Michael and Usain and Gabby -- and for more England.

I'm not much of a sports fan, but I am an Olympics fan. Given my career in broadcasting, I'm usually watching as much for the production values of the TV coverage as for the results of the competition.

At least that's what I tell myself each time the games roll around. Then I quickly find myself caught up in the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

I mean, how can I not get caught up in the fact that Michael Phelps is amazing, absolutely stunning, the best of the best, the best in the world? Sure, Usain Bolt is somewhat over the top with his poses and posturing, but boy, oh boy, can that man run fast! And watching Gabby Douglas, who hails from right down the road in Tidewater: The wattage of her winning smile could power Phoebus for a day.

The games being in London this summer just added to the pleasure. London is my second favorite city in the world (just behind Richmond). I went there as a kid for the first time in 1967, terribly naive and eyes full of wonder. I stayed in a B&B with a sink in the room and a bathroom down the hall. You had to feed coins into a meter to get hot water for a bath. But all I did there was sleep, so it didn't matter. The breakfast each morning was tasty and plentiful. I even ate broiled kidney. (Actually I had one bite of one broiled kidney and have never taken another bite of broiled kidney since, but let's not go there. Otherwise, I cleaned my plate.)

I have a friend of long standing who lives in London. She wasn't too excited about the Olympics coming to town, and who could blame her? She is definitely not a sports fan, and the influx of tourists for the games complicated her daily life.

She is, however, a big fan of her hometown. Nevertheless, I think she was surprised when I told her how overwhelmingly positive the images of London were as seen here in the U.S. I told her that NBC estimated that the 2012 Olympics was the most-watched event in U.S.A. television history. Some 220 million Americans watched.

NBC is smart enough to know that we're not all sports fans. So they enlivened their coverage with brief travelogue pieces -- the feature story on Stonehenge was one of my favorites -- and even an admirable hour-long documentary by Tom Brokaw on England's "finest hour," the country's survival of the Battle of Britain and then the Blitz. The Brokaw documentary surprised my friend when I told her about it; she lived through it all in Wimbledon and came close to being blown to smithereens when the Germans dropped a bomb on the house across the street.

(She did send me a great picture of a fox she spotted last week in her garden, which we'd call the back yard over here - a cute little red fox, crouched by a lawn chair and looking towards the camera.)

So, the games are now over. But they'll be back in about 18 months when the Winter Olympics start up in February 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

I've never been to Sochi. I don't even know exactly where Sochi is, except that it's somewhere on the Black Sea coast.

But, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be watching.