Founded 1983 A.D. Come next year, I will have been in Architectural Salvage a mere thirty years. Bearing in mind that academics, archaeologists and far brighter enthusiasts than me have established that the architectural salvage trade goes back to pre-Biblical times, the recent Salvo article on the Olympic site reclamation figures has disappointed; we are now all banging our heads against a brick wall, when we should be banging it with a brick-hammer, blunt axe, ball-pane or whatever your favourite tool for dressing brick.
 
A potential 4 MILLION bricks? A measly 40,000 recovered?
 
When Joshua demolished the walls of Jericho, he used a trumpet, and no doubt the walls got re-built or re-used, dressed & re-faced by hand. It's a good job Joshua didn't have a 360 on caterpillar-tracks with a demolition claw. He certainly didn't have steel toe-capped safety-sandals. Just a trumpet. Maybe the walls came tumbling down from the Jericho residents banging on the walls with a broom-handle. Either way, all got re-used.
 
When Samson tore down the pillars of the Philistine temple with his bare hands (for safety-gloves were yet to be invented) he wasn't followed-up by the crusher and a fleet of bulk bins to take his handwork away.
 
Jump a couple of thousand years, and no sooner did the C of E pillage and reduce the monasteries to rubble, whole towns & villages rose as the locals then pillaged the remains, carting it all off in the sixteenth-century equivalent of prams & shopping trollies. For yeah & verily, there be no ye olde landfille syte.
 
I doubt the ancient Greeks wasted anything before or after their Olympics, because the ruins are still there. Visit any of them, though, and there's lots of bits missing. Where did the chunks of Acropolis go? Mr. Papadopoloussis's extension, probably.
 
The modern Olympics are now renowned for money-pits rather than wrestling-pits. No longer the art of throwing-the-cricket-ball or mole-strangling, now there are skateboard ramps and tiddley-wink arenas required. Vast areas have to be cleared to make way for indoor hang-gliding and beach cribbage venues. The television audience for sub-aqua dominoes alone is expected to be in excess of 3 billion worldwide.
 
Unlike Joshua's trumpet, (cut to Jericho's Defence Minister - "how the hell was I to know he'd use a trumpet?") we get four years notice of the Olympics. Samson only pulled down the Dogan Temple because his hairdresser couldn't fit him in for a cut, curl and colour for three weeks. In 2012, the site clearance of the Victorian buildings was surely assured as part of London's bid seven years previous. In the fifteen-hundreds, the advance notice on a monastery sale of roof-slate and stained-glass windows was no more than the time it took to hang, draw and quarter a monk, and paint 'Roof for sale' on the monastery door. Abbeys became barns and building materials.
 
Unlike the monks, we understand in 2012 that tenants and freeholders have to be evicted, rehoused, compulsory purchase orders served and processed, which takes time. Jericho did not have any Urban Regeneration Project show-boated by Louis Armstrong, Eddie Calvert or any other trumpeters of their day. Samson's demolition party was not presented with CGI graphics sponsored by Vidal Sassoon with Tom Jones singing why, why, why, and Delilah (close up) declaring "because you're worth it".
 
The 2012 Olympics had all the time in the world. All the time to go through their legal processes, and all as fait an accompli as Mr Pappadopoulis planning his extension as soon as Athens was clear of shin-kickers and synchronised swimmers looking for shelter.
 
I am convinced that if Salvo existed when all of the above happened, we would have seen ads posted proclaiming 'Temple with columns' for sale, or '5,000 face metres of Jericho walling', or maybe an advert in 138 A.D we might have seen 'Walling stone for sale. Eighty miles long. No longer needed. Apply Emperor Hadrian, Roman Army.'
 
To anyone who has handled a Roman brick (and we gave those smart-arses 300 years notice that their buildings would no longer be required. Only dirty people need baths), I say this: Come day of demolition, what's left is all up for grabs.
 
Or not, crusher permitting.
 
Salvo Ad April 2084: Vintage 2030's Mars Olympic pavilion: seats 40,000, collapses into three handy suit-cases.
 
In the meantime, we're bollocksed. When did they invent Quantity Surveyors?
 
Busby
 
p.s. For verification of any of the above consult your family bible or Wikipaedia.