Change happens, but not always for a logical reason

I’M all for change.

Too many people get stuck in the past, clinging on to foregone times, harking back to the ‘good old days’ when life was so much easier and that much better.

But you have to roll with the times. Technology improves, our environment alters and the way things appear change, not always for the better, but they change nonetheless.

If we stood still forever, sewage would still be flowing along our streets and clothes would be run through a washboard.

Change happens, people, deal with it.

One thing I am loathe to deal with is the over-used phrase: Change for change sake.

There was something inherently wrong with the European Athletics Championships.

It’s hard to imagine there could be anything wrong, especially since Great Britain completed their best ever medal haul at the championships, amassing a whopping 19 medals, including six golds.

It was an impressive achievement from everyone involved and saw us finish behind only Russia and France in the overall table.

Indeed, it bodes well for the Olympics in London in two years’ time.

What doesn’t bode well is the medals that are given out - they are rectangular.

What?

I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man, but I fear I will, because I just cannot understand it.

And it may seem like something truly trivial to get worked up about, but I simply do not like it.

Medals have always been circular, apart from special military ones like the Victoria Cross or the Medal of Honour.

So what is with these new-fangled rectangular inventions?

Why do our best athletes suddenly get awarded with these?

I can just imagine the local papers’ news photographers now doing pictures of successful athletes and asking them to get their medal out and pose with it.

“Where’s your medal then? Oh, that’s it is it? I thought that was a special security pass around your neck.”

Because that is exactly what they look like, security passes, just gold, silver and bronze plated ones, exclusive security passes then, ones that can get you into all sorts of exciting places that us common folk are never allowed to go. The Olympic Village perhaps?

People can get rich quick designing ridiculous logos for things like World Cups and Olympic Games, logos that the majority of us take one look at and forget almost instantly.

Medals are what everyone who takes part in these events strive for, they are not something that should be forgotten in a flash.

I suppose in that sense the person, or persons, there were probably a whole fleet of designers tasked with coming up with a new and inventive idea for the medals, have succeeded in their brief then, because it’s got me on my high horse.

But someone or some people have probably got paid substantially for these new designs and they really shouldn’t have. What was the point in bringing about such a change? Was it necessary? Certainly not.

God forbid the powers that be change the shape of the London 2012 medals.

Bring back circular medals please. Some things have to change with society, medal shape is not one of them.

Whatever next? Olympic rings being replaced by Olympic duo-decahedrons?