[xoxoxoBruce]

Here's a wonderful story about one of the torchbearers using her torch to make people happy after her run.

I realised then that the torch could either sit awkwardly on my mantelpiece, or it could embark on its own journey. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I wanted it to have some sort of use beyond grating cheese. So when we returned home, I put out the word via email: WHO WANTS A GO WITH THE OLYMPIC TORCH?

Suddenly, I was the most popular girl in my social group. The torch sped off to East Sussex, where it visited some schools my friends teach in. When it got back to London it visited Edith Neville Primary in Somers Town, where the staff were as excited to hold it as the pupils (possibly even more so). One teacher, Miss Crowther, photographed every child and member of staff with the torch – about 300 pictures in all – and a few days later the copies were snapped up at the summer fair, raising funds for the school.

Next it went off to St Joan of Arc primary in Islington, just four miles from the Olympic Park. At their summer fête, they set up a ''Have your photo taken with the torch’’ stall. The kids turned up in their national colours – Jamaica, Barbados, France, Spain (the school has a high intake of students from outside the UK) – and queued all day for snaps. Then it went round the corner to St John’s Highbury Vale, where the week before the pupils had made torches out of papier-mâché, old socks and crêpe paper. The mother of a child who had been ill that day called to say her son was distressed at having missed it. The torch stayed so that he could hold it. Later, at Our Lady of Muswell Primary, it experienced the kind of adulation usually accorded to Justin Bieber.

Much more at the link.