Simon Barnes at the Olympic Games: Reading poetry, drinking beer

I have a raft of Chinese literature with me, some modern, some, like the poetry, improbably ancient. And I am reading it intently, though not obsessively. But I always find that reading the literature of the country in the country concerned not only increases your understanding of the book, it also helps you to come to terms with the place and the people in it.

And this informs your writing: sometimes with a phrase that ravishes you with its perfection and seems to encapsulate a time or a person, sometimes because it seems to capture the strange sporting situation you find yourself in. I remember, in Athens four years ago, stumbling on a line of the Greek poet George Seferis, about "a young she-wolf," because that day I had watched the great Carolina Kluft compete in all her primeval ferocity, and I had something to hold on to.

When a writer is involved in one of those stories that goes on and on, day after day, a dilemma presents itself. Do you immerse yourself totally in the story, think of nothing else, do nothing else, surrender yourself entirely to the flex and warp of the events you are supposed to be writing about? Or do you, on the contrary, break out and do all kinds of other, quite irrelevant things?

I am of one mind in these circumstances: you must do both. You must seek to become an obsessive, and you must remain myriad-minded. Keeping your eye on the ball is essential, breaking the spell is equally important. Staying in the zone matters, but then so does going walkabout.

I am an obsessive who finds it easy to put things down. I am enthralled by involvement in a tale and place, but I get stir-crazy if I can't get away. I need to keep concentrating on such matters as the Olympic Games and the nature of China, and I know that if I give too much attention to such things, I will explode.

Reading is a vital part of it, so far as I am concerned. What I am reading on any trip is of vital importance. But then so is music. My colleague, Ron Lewis, marched proudly and optimistically into the Main Press Centre here this morning, his head was full of Beethoven's Seventh, a pretty good start to the day.

Me, I spent last night with Johann Sebastian, the great companion of my travels. True, the Goldbergs aren't terribly Chinese, or for that matter terribly sporting, but they have been an oasis of calm and beauty and perfection in a sporting world in which such things can be hard to find.

But I was reading a slightly yellowed Penguin Classic called Poetry of the Late T'ang, a book bought some years ago in the optimistic belief that the purchase itself - rather than prolonged perusal - would be enough to make me wise. I found that it was something worth waiting for. The images of water and boats and chrysanthemums - all, it seemed, representing some form of sadness and hopeless nostalgia - worked a fine spell on me. So I fetched a bottle of Tsing-Tao and read some more.

Orhan Pamuk in Turkey, Fernando Pessoa in Portugal, Patrick White in Australia, RK Narayan in India: the list marches on. And I will tell you more about the Chinese writers that have shown me China as I come to know both them and it a bit more. In the nature, I must seek some more solace in another important travelling companion. The name changes from country to country, but it is always the same thing. Time, I think, for a Tsing-Tao.