Grace Dent: My ultimate Olympic experience. Step 1... glean a ticket

Be prepared to lose your marbles every time Team GB has a shouting chance at anything

Be prepared to lose your marbles every time Team GB has a shouting chance at anything (Getty Images)

1. There may be 80,000 seats for each session, but gleaning a ticket to the athletics requires such skill, it should have its own medal ceremony. Safest bet now, in my opinion, is combing Twitter for spares. My ticket to see Bolt's medal ceremony on Monday involved a shadowy meeting in Café Nero with a dad on the brink of a logistical breakdown attempting to sell and swap his hoard. This sense of derring-do makes one's entrance to the shiny new stadium all the more glorious. One can tell journos who were given freebies as they're all on the internet whining how far the walk is from the front row to the media bus.

2. Enter the Olympic Park, marvelling at the official "gamesmakers", a chipper army of part Red Coat/part Mr Motivator smilebots of all ages. Begin harbouring fantasies of volunteering for Rio 2016, an adventurous whim set to be the new Gap Year/Shirley Valentine/Midlife Crisis. Think of the fun you could have sitting at the top of a step-ladder, in breathable fabrics, with a loudhailer. Take a moment to observe our wonderful armed forces in charge of security, all dapper and cheery in their uniforms, currently finding the constant thoroughfare of titillated, cackling mums demanding a "thorough frisking" more terrifying than night manoeuvres in Helmand Province.

3. Pre-athletics, wander the park gawping at the backs of people's heads in the BBC studios and the hideous Orbit which is neither tall enough to be exciting nor pretty enough to want a picture beside. Try to buy a beer but realise the bars are staffed by teenagers with the sense of urgency of Harry Enfield's Kevin washing his mother's car. Buy a Wenlock even though you thought you loathed Wenlock. Buy a massive Team GB lanyard even though six weeks ago you associated massive Union Jacks with the scary pub down the road that books bands called White Warriors on St George's Day. Meet actual life-sized Wenlock on one of his walkabouts, try to keep it frosty, but instead run towards him screaming "Wennnnnlock!!" while the 16-year-old drama student inside weeps and counts off another day to Sunday's closing ceremony.

4. Find your seat in the stadium. My session included the women's pole-vault final, or more accurately, "three hours of women faffing with a stick and not quite clearing anything". Become slightly concerned your face might flash up on the big screen as big as a double decker bus at any timer and you'll be forced to do wacky double thumbs, or may just get caught with your finger up your nose. Be prepared to lose your marbles every time Team GB has a shouting chance at anything. Dai Green's appearance on Monday was greeted with thousands of Britons bellowing and honking like that big gob who goes down your local football ground, whips his top off and wobbles his man-boobs. My favourite event on my visit was the women's shot putt final. Every single competitor was a formidable mountain of womanhood, the sort that appears out of the kitchen if you quibble with the bill in a Bulgarian holiday resort shouting: "WHAT WRONG WITH GHOULASH?"

5. Give yourself emotionally to the medalling ceremony. Inwardly mull the idea of constructing some pallets into a private podium in your garden and playing Chariots of Fire after work just to reward oneself for changing photocopier toner "like a champion". Be prepared to cry over foreign national anthems as little old ladies three rows behind you stand up and belt out the words with full throated pride. Okay, to be fair, the Belarusian women beside me were sort of busking it when Ostapchuk got her gold. In fact, by verse two I'm sure they were singing lines from Bright Eyes by Simon and Garfunkel, but it's the warm-heartedness that counts. There's a lot of that inside the stadium.